Biosophy, meaning wisdom of life or worldly wisdom, is a term probably first used by Ignaz Paul Vitalis Troxler, a Swiss philosopher, in 1806. It was later used by other philosophers like Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990), who used biology as the foundation of his philosophy. Zapffe first set out his ideas in Den sidste Messias (en. The Last Messiah) (1933); later a more systematic defence was given in his philosophical treatise Om det tragiske (en. On the tragic) (1941).

Zapffe's arguments have been understood in relation to philosophical pessimism and existentialism; he is also sometimes regarded as a nihilist.

The Biosophy Program was presented on the Internet by Anna Öhman & Svenolov Lindgren in January 1998 [1] (http://www.geocities.com/biosophy/). They noted that "the term biosophy was previously used by Zapffe (1941) in a literary context for the analysis of human social life based on philosophy of existence and biological facts. Such a narrow circumscription of biosophy is in our opinion no obstacle to widen the definition to encompass all systematic thinking on biological issues."

The Biosophy Program was intended to circumscribe and systemize biological studies in a philosophical framework to support teaching at courses on philosophy and courses on biology. The biosophical thinking is defined by Öhman & Lindgren in five philosophical fields and discriminated from Næss’ ecosophy.

See also: biology, bioinformatics, biophysics