Agency as Biology's Central Challenge

Today we sit with the old questions and let them breathe again, tracing the places where life begins to feel like a presence rather than a computer. Turner walks through the fault lines of modern biology, pointing to the quiet mind-like shimmer in organisms shaping their worlds. The conversation moves slowly, deliberately, as if the universe itself were leaning in to listen. By the end, the idea of agency feels less like a taboo and more like something we’ve sensed all along.

Part 1: https://youtu.be/MOr-FZ_ogTI

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00:00 Go!

00:08:43 – Gene-Centered Evolution Takes Over

00:11:10 – McClintock’s Discovery Breaks the Mold

00:14:19 – Genes as Interpreted Signals, Not Dictators

00:18:11 – From Mutationism to Epigenetics

00:20:41 – Dawkins and the Selfish Gene Frame

00:24:30 – Life Strives for More Than Survival

00:27:47 – Culture as a Force in Evolution

00:30:28 – Termites and Environmental Inheritance

00:32:22 – When Literalism Distorts Science and Religion

00:35:22 – Beyond Gould’s Magisteria

00:39:02 – The Aiming of Organisms

00:41:58 – Desire, Agency, and Evolutionary Trajectories

00:44:14 – Human Exceptionalism and the Myth of Evolution’s End

00:47:46 – Cultural Barriers to Integrative Biology

00:49:39 – The Transcendence of Materials

00:52:10 – Purposeful Behavior in Termite Societies

00:55:35 – Preference and Purpose in Termite Architecture

00:59:14 – Human Metaphysics and Cognitive Niches

01:04:19 – Cracks in the Evolutionary Consensus

01:06:39 – Biology as the Bridge Between Facts and Meaning

01:08:58 – The Missing Definition of Life

01:10:59 – Biology’s Identity Crisis

01:12:36 – Rethinking Life and the Universe

01:15:08 – The Origin of Life Problem

01:16:28 – From Chemistry to Cognitive Emergence

01:20:27 – Life as a Gradual Flame

01:23:13 – Agency as the Heart of Biology

01:25:42 – The Scientific Struggle With Agency

01:27:04 – Turner’s Work on Organisms, Design, and Purpose

#consciousness, #agency , #evolution, #originoflife, #emergence, #complexity , #cognition , #purpose , #epigenetics , #philosophy, #meaning, #physicspodcast, #philosophypodcast

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