You may have heard of genes that act selfishly, organisms that adapt in order to survive, and ecosystems that behave as cohesive units. Biologists often talk about these entities as if they were purposeful, exhibiting agency, directionality or function. Should they?
That’s one of the big questions that brings together experimentalists, theoreticians, and philosophers who are involved in CASP. This is the Purpose Podcast, where we sample the different interpretations and research advances of interdisciplinary projects studying complex living phenomena - agency, cognition, development, function, and goal-directedness - across spatial and temporal scales.
In this episode of The Purpose Podcast, we meet a designer and an evolutionary biologist who are working together to bring light into a dark corner of the University of Minnesota. Evolutionary biologist Emilie Snell-Rood convinces people that studying weird animals can be useful for designing things. Designer Jessica Rossi-Mastracci is looking forward to playing with bio-inspired designs, one of which may or may not be a butterfly wing wallpaper. Artwork by Bernie Cook.
Ramray Bhat is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Banagalore, India. He studies how collectives of cancer cells migrate and metastasize to new organs within the human body.