Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"An unsettling but highly thought-provoking book."

New York Times Book Review
Survival of the Prettiest (18 September 2017)
"A friendly takeover attempt ... which argues that today’s mechanistic neo-Darwinism needs to find room for the “agency” — the desire — that Turner insists drives every organism and, by extension, evolution itself ... it’s a good read and a strong pitch."

Evolution News & Science Today
In Purpose and Desire ... Scott Turner Explores Biology's Second Law.
“It’s what distinguishes the living from the inanimate world…homeostasis is an exceedingly strange idea.” And it’s homeostasis that his book is about."

Cosmic Fingerprints.com Evolution 2.0

"Purpose & Desire ... is yet another in a line of PRO-evolution books by highly credible, mainstream biologists who are stepping forward and insisting that The Emperor really does have No Clothes."

Mercatornet. Denise O'Leary. A biologist awakes from reductionism and begins to rediscover life.

The basic problem, he contends, is that current biology requires us to view life forms as machines. Yet a key characteristic of life forms is the intention of remaining alive and purposeful activity toward that end.

Zocalo. An ASU knowledge enterprise. Ten Illuminating Books for Confusing Times.

Turner argues that what distinguishes life is striving, and that adaptive striving is one of the drivers of evolution. In putting forth his ideas about evolution, he also makes a compelling argument about the relationship between culture and science—and the danger in pretending that science exists in a vacuum.

Quarterly Review of Biology.Addy Pross.

J Scott Turner's provocatively titled book, Purpose & Desire is a further reminder that biology's very nature remains mired in controversy and uncertainty.

Evolution News & Science Today. David Klinghoffer. Biologist Scott Turner: What is Life? And Other Simple Questions.

There appears to be, to put it in even more startling terms, some sort of cognition everywhere in life, an awareness of the environment and how it must be delicately, expertly manipulated.