the philosophy of biology

Leon Kass doesn't think the deterministic worldview makes any sense:

The living organism directs the comings and goings of molecules and all their inter-relations, as the legislative guides the executive or a musical score the musicians. And organization, legislation, and harmony, I remind you, are not themselves material.

None of this is altered by the marvelous findings of biochemistry and molecular biology, claims of molecular biologists or biochemists to the contrary nonwithstanding. We cannot here present a full argument. But suffice it to say that even DNA - the genetic material, the so-called molecular basis of life - functions not as a chemical material but as information carried by material. True, the information carried in DNA is borne by its material elements - that is, by the nucleotide bases (adenine, guanine, thymine,cytosine) - though here too the preservation of the same kind of base, not of this particular nucleotide molecule, is all that is required. True the nucleotides of DNA are chemically well suited to act as the coded letters of legislative messages for protein synthesis. But the medium is not the message. Call it a plan, a program, organization, whatever - this ruling principle is in itself immaterial. Proof: One can hold DNA molecules in a bottle, but one cannot physically hold or grasp the messages they carry.

This is an interesting argument but it leaves me with an odd feeling. It's spelled out a bit further in his book , The Hungry Soul. Not entirely sure what to think. In my mind, it seems to at least cast doubt on the capacity of science to explain, without ambiguity, all physical processes.