The Almost Obvious Case for a Transcendental Understanding of Life

The follow-up to the Human Genome Project has found very little to connect variations in our DNA blueprints to some of our basic individual characteristics. This very surprising “missing heritability” problem, plus a number of existing underappreciated challenges to the DNA-based model, together are consistent with an underlying complementary transcendental contribution to life. Some of the behavioral challenges for DNA and the material-only model are quite suggestive of transcendental contributions. This possible overlap between an apparent hole in the scientific understanding of life and the common premodern transcendental perspective is introduced here.