In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, one of the fish in the fish tank said ‘Personally I very much doubt if they’re going to say anything about the Meaning of Life at all’. That is not the case for Maureen O’Malley's engaging narration in Philosophy of Microbiology, in which microbes and microbiology answer the fundamental questions of the philosophy of biology. In the last pages, the reader will also find the contribution of microbiology to our pursuit of the nature of life.