From his Wikipedia page: Rosen believed that the contemporary model of physics - which he thought to be based on an outdated Cartesian and Newtonian world of m

From his Wikipedia page: Rosen believed that the contemporary model of physics - which he thought to be based on an outdated Cartesian and Newtonian world of mechanisms - was inadequate to explain or describe the behavior of biological systems; that is, one could not properly answer the fundamental question "What is life?" "Mainstream biology" isn't particularly interested in the "What is life?" question (ADDED: rather, it's an interesting philosophical question brought up when viruses are seriously taught), and is quite productive with its current reductionist approaches. That would include, for example, MIT's Biology department, infamous, as of the '80s at least, for not looking much above the level of the cell. I'd look at two things: there's a semi-joke item or two about how mainstream biologists would never understand a radio based on their methods, and look at the ones trying to understand the brain, or why MIT created a Brain and Cognitive Sciences department (http://bcs.mit.edu/aboutbcs/history.html http://bcs.mit.edu/aboutbcs/history.html) or some of the reasons why e.g. Jerry Lettvin was in the EECS department instead of biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Lettvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Lettvin).