Table 1.

Compatibility of cellular biological ambiguity with Western and Eastern philosophies

	Western Philosophy	Eastern Philosophy
Materialism, objective reality	(+) Material forms exist as objects of study	(+) The material world of our human senses is ‘unreal’
Self-reference, consciousness	(+) Embedded, to an uncertain extent in all living things; of unknown origin	(+) Embedded in the cosmos
Self-realization	(+) Maintenance of Homeostasis	(+) Being that transcends things
Macroorganisms	(−) End points	(+) Way stations
Quantum phenomena	(+) Used to improve predictions from space-time information sets i.e. quantum measurement	(+) Superimposition of possibilities settled by self referential consciousness
Unicellular recapitulation	(−) Intermediary step between crucial macro-organic forms	(+) Continual transcendent self- referential cosmic Being
Phenotype	(−) An attribute of a macro-organic form to assist in survival	(+) A form of continuous environmental-biologic complementarity
First Principles of Physiology	(+) Subject to random reinforcement	(+) An aspect of a universal life force
Genes	(+) Essential code as the primary script of an organism	(+) Tools of self-awareness
Evolution	(+) random and necessarily gradual	(+) An aspect of an Ultimate that can proceed through significant discontinuities