Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio: Biological autonomy: a philosophical and theoretical enquiry: Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands 2015, 222 pp, ISBN 978-94-017-9836-5

The essay review summarizes the intention as well as some of the major topics from the book of A. Moreno and M. Mossio and discusses them against the background of recent considerations on the general understanding of organisms. The authors see themselves in the organicist tradition in biology and propose that a new understanding of living beings can be developed around the notion of organismic autonomy, which enables biological systems to maintain themselves in an environment through directed behavior.