If we are talking about the way that organisms operate on gradient-driven "molecular machinery", chemo-electric impulses, and iteration on state-based transcription of genetic instructions, I would absolutely agree that biological life is mainly "clockwork" in this regard.
The trouble with applying some philosophical attribution of "determinism" (fate) to these systems, however, comes from the issues we have in understanding the fabric of the universe itself, IMO. Strange things happen in these small scales.
Basically it seems like we would need to know the most intimate details of the quantum physics "layers" or "domains" in which these higher abstractions (systems; physics -> chemistry -> biology) operate to be able to say whether any human thought or action (e.g. a particular chemical structure and electrical state in the nervous system of the organism) is preordained by the system in which it exists.
If we are talking about the way that organisms operate on gradient-driven "molecular machinery", chemo-electric impulses, and iteration on state-based transcription of genetic instructions, I would absolutely agree that biological life is mainly "clockwork" in this regard.
The trouble with applying some philosophical attribution of "determinism" (fate) to these systems, however, comes from the issues we have in understanding the fabric of the universe itself, IMO. Strange things happen in these small scales.
Basically it seems like we would need to know the most intimate details of the quantum physics "layers" or "domains" in which these higher abstractions (systems; physics -> chemistry -> biology) operate to be able to say whether any human thought or action (e.g. a particular chemical structure and electrical state in the nervous system of the organism) is preordained by the system in which it exists.