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.
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.