The essays in this issue of the Annals of the History and Theory of Biology originate from the Göttingen conference “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb (1789). ‘What is life?’ in science, philosophy and politics around 1800,” held on October 14–15, 2021. They examine both the genesis and the later interpretations of the central idea in Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s (1752–1840) conception of the life sciences: the notion of the “Bildungstrieb” or “formative drive.” The essays shed light on two key factors that helped this idea spread across literature, philosophy, and the natural sciences − a certain conceptual vagueness and openness to reinterpretations, and the Romantic-era conviction of an underlying unity between nature and culture.