Looking for a mathematics for living systems : Reply to comments on “Towards a mathematical theory of living systems focusing on developmental biology and evolution: A review and perspectives”

This note is motivated by various commentaries which have critically analyzed our contribution to a personal perspective on the conceptual difficulties that mathematics meets when attempting to describe the complexity of living matter, and specifically on the challenging goal of developing a mathematical theory for the evolution of living systems. The commentaries (Banasiak and Lachowicz, 2011; Freguglia and Bazzani, 2011; Herrero, 2011; Kolev, 2011; Mamontov, 2011) [3], [17], [22], [24] and [25] have stimulated further reasonings that induce us to look ahead to new research perspectives that are critically analyzed in this note.