Organic wholeness: the biosemiotic view In Cassirer’s excellent analysis of the development of biological theory up to his own time he correctly alines with van Bertalanfy’s and Ungerer’s proposal for a a reconciliation in the centuries long “war” between mechaniscism and vitalism. The organismic or systemic view is seen as a way to transcend the split between the “summational” view of the organism inherent to the mechanistic tradition and the threat of psychism inherent to the vitalist tradition. Today, however, more than half a century later, systems biology hasn’t really met the promises it held. Biosemiotics, the semiotic approach to the understanding of life, offers a radical reframing of biological theory aimed at overcoming the teleological challenge inherent to biology.