Ep 36: Intentional Evolution (Scott Turner)
Is there a role for agency in evolution? Do organismal efforts to maintain homeostasis represent a form of biological intentionality?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Scott Turner, a physiologist and emeritus professor of Biology from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Scott’s book, Purpose and Desire, discusses how holes in standard evolutionary theory might be productively filled by the concept of homeostasis. Scott argues that by attempting to maintain metabolism and exporting entropy to the environment, organisms manifest a form of agency that can affect the evolution of their lineages. His book and ideas have met with some criticism, and in the show, we confront him about whether his position is subtle intelligent design theory.
Cover photo: Bernard Dupont (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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AW = Art Woods
MM = Marty Martin
ST = Scott Turner
TW = Taylor Williams (Student Spotlight)
MP = Massimo Pigliucci (intro)
FC = Frances Champagne (intro)
AW: We're kicking off this week with another Student Spotlight. Taylor Williams is our first marine scientist.
TW: My name is Taylor Williams, and I am a first-year master’s student at the College of Charleston in Dr. Heather Spalding's lab. I am interested in understanding the sexual phenology and population connectivity of a newly discovered mat-forming invasive alga at Pearl and Hermes Reef in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a remote and pristine marine national monument northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. This research will expand our understanding of invasion biology and help to shed light on a newly discovered invasive alga that is desiccating a notably pristine reef on the scale of hundreds of meters squared in an area that otherwise has no recorded algal invasions. This research has important implications on the overall health of this marine national monument, because it will help to inform management decisions moving forward. It's also been interesting conducting this research because the invasive alga in the spotlight hasn't been heavily studied, meaning any information acquired along the way is likely new to science and new to me.
MM: Thank you so much for sending that in! If you are a student who wants to talk about your research on Big Biology, send us an email with a one-minute voice memo to info@bigbiology.org. Now here's the show!
AW: In one of our first episodes, we talked to Massimo Pigliucci about flaws he perceived in the modern evolutionary synthesis.
MM: The modern synthesis is a powerful and durable theory that combined Darwinian ideas about natural selection with Mendel's ideas about inheritance.
MP: People started [word?] or grumbling noises about the fact that the modern synthesis wasn't wrong as much as it was a little too limited.
AW: We've returned to this theme in multiple episodes since. A few months ago, we talked to Frances Champagne about the inheritance of epigenetic marks.
FC: The whole framework of modern synthesis is on the stability, not a plasticity model.
AW: We also talked to Denis Noble about randomness and evolution, and to Mihaela Pavlicev about the commonness and importance of two forms of genetic complexity called epistasis and pleiotropy.
MM: On this episode, we continue to examine potential cracks in the modern synthesis, this time in a conversation with the biologist Scott Turner, an emeritus professor of biology from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. In 2017, Scott published "Purpose and Desire," a book that focuses on the role of homeostasis and evolution.
AW: In the book, Scott uses the ideas of cognition and intentionality to describe how organisms sense and act on both their own internal states and their surrounding environments. By their actions, organisms achieve homeostasis internally, but also modify their external environments. We spend a lot of time in our conversation on this uncomfortable idea of intentionality.
MM: Terms like intentionality and agency are uncomfortable to many, because they come with lots of historical and philosophical baggage. Ever since Aristotle, various thinkers have invoked concepts like vitalism, phlogiston, and entelechy to describe an invisible force that animates living things. Most of these ideas have rightfully been discarded as illogical, untestable, or religiously motivated.
AW: However, when considered from the perspective of homeostasis, agency can make sense. One of Scott's key ideas is that organisms must export entropy into the environment if they are to maintain the internal stability that defines life, and agency is a key part of how organisms do that.
ST: Well, intentionality is one of these uncomfortable subjects that causes a lot of heartburn for people, so what actually is it that we mean by intentionality, you know? Is there a way to frame that in a manner that avoids some of the mystical traps, and it's a legitimate question to ask, you know, are you just invoking spooks here, or ghosts in the machine, or, or things like this, and so, one of the things that I think has to be done if we're going to be asking these fundamental questions is to have, have a sound conception of what intentionality is, and it's tied into cognition very intimately. To me, the simplest definition is, is coupling modification of the environment with the cognitive interpretation of the environment.
AW: Scott's book has generated both praise and outrage. In an essay in the Quarterly Review of Biology, the chemist and origin of life researcher Addy Pross, praised the book as "thought-provoking."
MM: Others have simply been provoked by Scott's ideas. The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, for example, eviscerated the book on his blog, claiming that it represents a veiled attempt to sneak Gd back into biology. Now to be clear, we're not creationists, and we invited Jerry onto the podcast to talk about his perspective, but in an email, he told us he thinks the book is, quote, "garbage."
AW: We would urge you to listen and judge for yourself. You'll hear in various parts of the conversation that Marty and I had big problems with some of Scott's positions, and especially with the last section of the book, which hints at sympathy for intelligent design.
MM: We nevertheless learned a lot from the conversation, and we think that Scott's ideas will contribute substantially to progress in biology.
AW: I'm Art Woods.
MM: And I'm Marty Martin.
AW: This is Big Biology.
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05:12
AW: Well, well, let's talk about science now, and we want to frame this around your book, "Purpose and Desire," and one of the sort of major overarching ideas in that book is that you think that standard evolutionary theory has some problems, it's either incorrect or that it lacks certain elements, and you suggest a number of things that can sort of fill that void, and among them things like niche construction theory, extended organism homeostasis, and we'll sort of get to all of those things during our conversation. But let's just start off talking about standard evolutionary theory. So, so why do you think it's incorrect, and maybe start by just saying what is it? Like, what is your conception of the standard theory?
ST: The standard theory to me stems from the, from the new synthesis, you know, which of course was that reconciliation of, of population genetics with Mendelian genetics. It was the brainchild of Fisher, Haldane, and Wright, and this notion of gene selectionism has been a crucial part of the whole efflorescence [is this the correct word?] of standard evolutionary theory. So, when you speak to, you know, people who identify themselves as Darwinists, it almost always comes down to the selection of genes. There's some kind of, there's some kind of fundamental genetic driver to all of this, you know, and of course that's, the reason for that is that the gene is considered to be the primary carrier of the hereditary, of the heredity, of past good function, adaptive function. And, you know, that was fine, and it was coherent, and I think I mentioned this in some of my papers, that, that this was actually, for the time, a fully coherent theory of Darwinism. But it has, in the rise of this coherent theory of Darwinism, certain things seem to have been, I think, left in the wake. And among them, a good coherent theory of adaptation. And I think that's important, because you know, when you get down to how living things actually work, you know, adaptation is a pretty significant part of how they actually make it through their lives and how they reproduce. But adaptation is kind of a problematic area when you are looking at it in terms of the standard evolutionary theory, and I think that's one of the things that's missing from SET, standard evolutionary theory, so to speak, you know. The, the conception of adaptation is gene based, and I think there's so much more to it than that. Also, you know, as we come to learn more and more about, about how genes work, you know, the whole notion of the gene as a specifier of apt function is starting to fall by the way, the conceptions of hereditary memory that we have are now broadening considerably, and a lot of this broadening has been due to the challenge to SET from niche construction theory, for example. And so, and so we seem to be getting into a much broader, more nuanced picture of the relationship between genes and function, between function and adaptation, and, you know, grounding adaptation and the gene center conception of natural selection I think is severely limiting.
08:47
AW: So, you say in several places you're taking adaptation to task in the book, and you say adaptation sits on a shaky foundation. So, what's wrong with our current ideas about adaptation?
ST: Well, one of the problems, I think, is that, is that we have no real independent way of conceding as an, of an apt function gene, if you will, except by the criteria that it's selected, and so that's one problem with it, but also when you start looking at the actual mechanics of adaptation, which is my, my wheelhouse, you know, you start having to deal with certain concepts that are actually quite uncomfortable for, you know, people who are steeped in the kind of mechanistic, gene based conception of adaptation, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a common experience, maybe you've, maybe you've had this experience, when you talk about uncomfortable concepts with, with many people, you know, you start talking about things like well, you know, you know, there's a purposeful aspect towards adaptation that, that, you know, really is essential to an understanding of adaptation. And then, you know, the eyes start to kind of, you know, go off to the side, or, or people try to change the subject, or things like this. So, so, you know, you're, you're, when you think about how adaption actually works, you have to start dealing with certain uncomfortable concepts in the framework of standard evolutionary theory, which, which presents itself as a fully scientific picture of how evolution works, and, and bringing in concepts like intentionality and purposefulness, and things like this, which I think you must do if you're going to have a sound concept of the phenomenon of adaptation, that starts to, you know, as I say, make people uncomfortable, and, you know, that to me is an area that therefore we need to kind of explore to get to the, get to, I think a fully coherent theory of what we're talking about.
MM: So, you casted a second ago, you cast adaptation in the sort of traditional context. I'm going to use your words from the book, that we're talking about statistical adjustments and genetic variation, and aptitudes. So, you had a nice image in another paper, I guess in 2016 that you wrote that we'll also talk about, showing the traditional, sort of, there's an environmental filter and those with a particular adaptation move through, and everything else doesn't. But, but the way that you cast it about, I think we're all on board, that something like that happens, but what produces the shapes of those, those balls that do and don't go through the filter, is where the, is where the contention may rest.
11:45
ST: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the, the image you're talking about is basically the meshwork and the footballs falling through, and the ones that, that are apt, so to speak, they actually go through the filter, and that's the next iteration that can reproduce, you know. That's, you know, that's a standard metaphor for how selection and for apt genes works, and of course niche construction theory introduces this new wrinkle, which is actually kind of the Baldwin effect that's been, that's been sort of recast in the language of niche construction theory, that those things, they have a choice, they have some ability to modify their selective environment, and, and, and this ability to modify the selective environment is, is a little bit of a tricky one for standard evolutionary theory. I don't think Darwin himself would have had any issue with that, I mean, you know, of course he was a fully, you know, one of the great naturalists of all time, and it was fully steeped in just how living things work and some of the amazing and remarkable things that they do to be able to survive and these kinds of things, but I think that dimension that Darwin's thinking has been a little bit lost in our, in our push to make evolution kind of a physics-like science.
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13:19
MM: Let's, let's try to first incorporate niche construction theory as a pathway to this sort of concept of extended organisms and the role of homeostasis, and where the meat on the bone really lies. Niche construction theory you just cast as a sort of process by which the organisms are modifying the filter, in a sense, so that would be one way to think about it. But the transition from there into the role of homeostasis, can you say something about the role of entropy in sort of how these, the sort of motivation, to use a very strong word, comes about?
ST: So, when you talk about entropy of course, you're talking about the, the, what life is actually fighting against all of the time to be able to, to persist, and, and, and when you talk about the ability to persist, you have to start getting into issues of homeostasis and how organisms actually do modify their environments to be, to be able to persist. And organisms resist entropy, basically by doing work continuously to mobilize a stream of matter and energy to create a specified order, which of course is the organism or any of its parts. And, and of course, when that work is not done anymore, then of course the, the, the drive towards entropy is unchallenged and of course, we all know what happens next. So, so that's an aspect of it. Now, when you talk about being able to manage that flow of matter and energy, you have to delve into what's actually doing that managing, and this is where the concept of adaptive barriers starts to come in. So, if you look at the, just the organism for example, you know, the organism, we perceive of it as something, you know, distinct from the environment in which it sits, and of course the organism persists, which is a form of homeostasis, and we can get into some of the philosophical issues surrounding homeostasis later on in the conversation, but the very persistence of an organism's form is itself a form of homeostasis. And that of course is maintained by this enormous complex of adaptive barriers that separates us from the environment: the linings of the lung, the linings of the intestine, the sensory interfaces, and those kinds of things, all of which are mediated by epithelium-like structures. And, and you can take some fairly simple aspects of, of conservation of mass and thermodynamics to be able to extend adaptive boundaries outward from the organism. So, so, so, we consist of a set of adaptive boundaries, contained within us [word?] is another set of adaptive boundaries that, you know, separate different organ systems from one another and so forth. But there's no physical or theoretical barrier to extend those adaptive boundaries outward, and you know, speaking of getting into the weeds, that was one of the, one of the things about the work with, with social insect colonies and, and termites that impressed upon me the ability of organisms to actually extend the adaptive boundary outwards, and, and in the case of the termites of course, they build these, these are the African termites that build these massive mounds as infrastructure for their sub-training colonies. What these mounds are is they are big, massive adaptive boundaries that have been constructed between the termites themselves and the environment, which they are, of course, totally unsuited to be living in on their own, and...
AW: Sort of cells building an epithelium out of earth, right?
ST: That's right, exactly. And, and so, that work impressed upon me the ability of organisms to be able to extend these adaptive boundaries outward, and the more I studied them, the more I came away impressed with just how extensive this reach was, you know, so it extends not only to managing the atmospheric composition within the nest, but it also co-opts the physical environment, the entire hydrology of the environment over a fairly extensive range, to be able to enable termites to live in a dry environment, but because they reconstruct their environment to manage water flow through it, they can survive in those kinds of environments. So, so, this is a natural tie-in to the whole niche construction idea, and, and what's driving this ability of termites to do this, and now this is the physiologist in me coming out, is, is, is the ability to manage flows of water, heat, respiratory gases, all those kinds of things, in a way that maintains and sustains and enables an environment within the colony to persist over time, and, in a word, homeostasis. But homeostasis extended beyond the bounds of the organism itself.
19:03
AW: Right.
MM: And to circle back to the concept of entropy, I mean, in a sense, your words I think have been that the entropy is exported out into the environment, farther and farther away, across these different levels, whether it's at the organismal level or super-organismal, in the case of termite mounds, just making sure I've got that correct, yeah.
ST: Yeah, yeah. You know, the, the standard textbook reconciliation, if you will, of, of, of life with the second law of thermodynamics that you see in almost all, you know, freshman biology textbooks, is that life only exists because it exports randomness to the environment, and, and you know, that's true, that's the second law of thermodynamics, but, but I think what's, what is missed in that is the extent to which that disorderliness can be pushed away from, from the, from the organism itself. And so, you know, if you, if you take the Gaia theory seriously, for example, and it's something that makes perfect sense to me as a physiologist, you know, the disorder is actually exported outside the biosphere. In other words, the biosphere is this massive system that's, that's actually regulated by life, and you know, as I say, to me as a physiologist, that makes absolute perfect sense to me. And so, and so, rather than thinking of life as a fundamentally disordering process from the perspective of the biosphere, it's actually a fundamentally ordering process, you know, it makes the living environment an orderly place, and... But of course, it does so by, you know, extending the boundary between, between randomness and disorder and orderliness, basically to the boundaries of the biosphere.
AW: Awesome. Let's zero in now on homeostasis itself. So, we keep tossing this around, but let's just sort of define that carefully, and maybe you could give a couple of examples of what homeostasis is.
ST: Okay, so homeostasis is one of these concepts that everyone, you know, has an idea of what it is, and, and, and so forth, and the standard, of course, definition that you see in physiology textbooks, of course, is that it's a mechanism that produces some kind of a regulation. And of course, a common example for that is the thermostat for your house, as well as the supposed thermostat that regulates a body temperature in an animal, for example. Now, that's certainly true. There's lots of fascinating mechanisms that go into that, but if you don't back into the history of the concept of homeostasis, of course it's attributed to Claude Bernard, to the, you know, 19th century contemporary of Charles Darwin, and basically the founder of modern physiology, and, and, and this concept of homeostasis is really attributable to him, and it's usually attributable to a particular aphorism that's quoted by every [phrase?] of course, this is the constance and the steadiness of the internal environment as a prerequisite for the continuation of life. Now, in modern times of course, we tend to take a very mechanistic picture of what homeostasis is, you know, what I call the clockwork homeostasis, you know, we have these mechanisms that produce a, say, a regulated temperature, or a regulated salt balance, or a regulated blood oxygen level, or these kinds of things. And, you know, not to take anything away from that, they're fascinating mechanisms there, but if you look back into the history of the concept of homeostasis, you find that it's a, it's a very different conception, you know, and, and, and here, a little bit of, of a digression into the history of, philosophical history of biology might be worthwhile, you know, we, modern biology has, has, has built a, a kind of mechanistic ethos into the way we think, you know. We tend to think naturally about mechanism, materialism; it's our job as scientists to be able to ferret those out, and to understand them and to clarify them. All good things, but if you look at the origins of this idea, you find it's actually a very vitalist idea. You know, we, we, we talk about Claude Bernard as the founder of experimental medicine, which he was, no doubt about it. But his motivations were actually steeped in a philosophical tradition about biology at the time, which was vitalist in origin, you know, that life only comes from life. Now, it's a very different kind of vitalism and the kind of vitalism that we tend to talk about these days, you know, which is we tend to caricature the vitalist idea as, you know, there's somehow vital spirits or vital essences, or ghosts in the machine, or, or, or these kinds of things. But that's a very different form of vitalism than the one that arose in the 19th century when people like Pasteur or Bernard were, were practicing, you know, for, in, in large part the philosophy of biology, if you will, had set aside this notion of vital spirits. It was clear that no one was ever going to find them, and that it wasn't a scientifically or intellectually sustainable idea. The focus then shifted to what was called process vitalism, and a fairly broader definition of vitalism, you know, what some people have called vitalism lite, that, that, that just the acknowledgement that life is something that's fundamentally distinctive from the physical world, and, and, and process vitalism was the solution that people like Pasteur and Bernard brought to that. And it's actually a fairly innocuous idea, you know, it's just saying that the, that, you know, homeostasis for example, this is Bernard speaking now, is the property that distinguishes life from non-life, and mechanism has a role in that, and this is why Bernard is a founder of experimental medicine. He was a superb experimentalist and you know, very attuned to the biochemical mechanisms that were involved. But, but to him, these were subservient to this notion of homeostasis as being the distinguishing feature of life, and if you look at the language of Bernard's aphorism, you see very clearly that he regards, he regards the mechanism as following from the antecedent of homeostasis. So, it's not the mechanism that produces homeostasis, it's homeostasis that actually produces the mechanism. And that's a, that's kind of a profound idea, you know, it takes a lot...
MM: Yeah, yeah.
ST: ...a lot of effort to get your head around that, but, you know, the more you delve into the mechanisms of how homeostasis works, you start to be impressed, at least I start to be impressed, that it's really this, this homeostasis, this persistence of the living world, that's actually driving the mechanisms rather than the other way around.
26:58
AW: Yeah. I just want to see if I can articulate a point here. So, I agree fully with your assessment of the importance of homeostasis, and you know, I myself am very excited about homeostasis as an idea, and I understand the links to these older ideas about, about vitalism. But, but I guess, you know, the sort of idea of linking it to vitalism introduces a kind of, you know, mysticism or you know, intentionality that, well I think we'll get to a little bit later, that I don't strictly see that as being necessary, right? So, so, why not characterize homeostasis as that's what organisms do in order to respond plasticly and flexibly to you know, changes in their local environments, and to maintain an internal milieu that's suitable for all the rest of the information and energy and matter processing that they have to do, and is the product of natural selection. You know, why invoke vitalism here?
ST: Well, I think it's essential, because we're really talking about whether we think life is something distinctive, and if it's distinctive, then what is it that makes it distinctive. And, you know, you have illustrated for me, Art, that the discomfort that arises from grappling with the, with the philosophical foundations of what vitalism actually tells us, and furthermore, what homeostasis actually tells us, and I don't want to take anything away from the validity of trying to work out the mechanisms of homeostasis, I mean, there's, there's enormous potential for understanding in there, there's enormous potential for being able to use these ideas to, you know, understand the process, understand ways to make it better in the case of developing treatments or pharmaceuticals or those kinds of things. So, that's absolutely an essential part of it, but you know, you, you have to eventually come to the point of asking yourself, what is it that's driving what, and when you talk about the mechanisms of homeostasis, you know, you know as well as anyone some of the, as anyone does, what the incredible complexity of those mechanisms is, and, and is it just that those mechanisms are being specified by genes? Is that it? And you know, I've come to the conclusion...
AW: But...
ST: ...from understanding the mechanisms, from delving into the mechanisms of it, that you know, maybe there's something else that's actually the more important driver.
AW: Yeah. But, I guess let me be clear that I don't think that my point is that we just need to understand mechanism, and in fact, Marty and I have spent a lot of time on the podcast sort of grappling with this idea of genes as determinants of traits, and we're sort of fully on board with the idea that, you know, phenotypes are these very complex interactions between genes and environments and developmental contexts, and you know, all the sort of normal things that we talk about. And I would say, you know, to me, the magic of homeostasis is that it's really emergent, complex process that comes out of these, you know, these underlying mechanisms that we can study and understand, but that it supersedes those. But to me, that doesn't lead to this idea of vitalism, it leads to an idea that, you know, biological systems are these incredibly complex things with emergent phenotypes that really matter.
30:50
ST: Well, let me just put the challenge back in your court then, you know, what's an emergent property? Tell me what an emergent property is, and then you start, I, I will argue that you start getting into some of the, some of the kind of quasi, I think you used the word mystical, kind of quasi-mystical conceptions of what's happening. And, you know, I'm not saying that anyone is right or anyone is wrong, you know, I, I've come to the point where, where I think some radical questions have to be posed to modern biology, and, and you know, I'm not saying I have any answers. I have some proposals, but I think that we're coming to the point where we can start sharpening our questions, and I think you've just you know, sharpened the question very well, you know. I happen to see that homeostasis is the starting point for the emergence of all of these wonderful complex types of things, and your perspective is coming from the other side. I'm fully on board with that, but...
AW: Yeah, and I see that this idea of emergence is almost like a kind of scientific way of invoking mysticism, right? But, I think, I think there's also sort of, there's a mechanistic way to think about emergence, right, which is properties of the bulk system that can't be readily predicted from the underlying parts.
ST: Absolutely.
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32:27
MM: Maybe to give an example Scott, of homeostasis, and you used the example of temperature regulation. I thought in the book, the juxtaposition of ectotherms and endotherms is a really useful way, although they're not necessarily incompatible, it's just a fairly simple way to represent where you're coming from with respect to this homeostasis, maybe driving mechanism. Do you want to, do you want to talk through that? Then we can get the cognition and intentionality and some of these other more complicated things.
ST: Okay. So, there's a whole chapter in "Purpose and Desire" about this whole issue of the clockwork homeostasis, and one of the first implications of this idea of course, was in temperature regulation, and you know, your listeners who are attuned to this will be fully familiar with this, you know, there's a, there's the discovery of a thermostat in the anterior hypothalamus of the brain, there are various kinds of regulatory mechanisms, various kinds of feedbacks in there. And if you look at where that whole field has gone, you know, it's a very, very intricate mechanistic approach to thermo regulation. Now, of course that work was done on mostly mammals and birds, mostly endotherms who generate quite a bit of heat to be able to maintain their, their body temperature, and so there's a fairly sophisticated mechanism of heat generation and heat flows within the body that are supposedly controlled by this, by this thermostat, by this clockwork homeostasis, so to speak. Now of course, if you come to other animals, and this is actually how I got my professional start, I worked on temperature regulation of ectotherms, specifically lizards, and of all things alligators towards the end of my PhD career. But, you know, the important discovery that came out of, you know, the work of naturalists in the 1960s, even back to the 1950s, was that, you know, lizards and creatures like this are not cold-blooded. They are more precisely ectothermic. They are very good regulators of their body temperature. In many instances, especially desert lizards, they regulate very high and steady body temperatures, and, and of course they do so by managing the flows of heat between the environment and themselves. So, the lizards will bask on the rocks in the sun in the morning, and then they'll shuttle back and forth between sunny aspects, between sunny parts of their environment and shady parts of the environment and so forth. Now, of course, taking a leaf from the work on thermoregulation in, in endotherms, for example, some biologists in the 1970s began to look into the mechanistic thermostat of behavior regulators, and of course, a great deal of fascinating work came from that. The most fascinating for me was that lizards could actually have fevers, you know, just like, just like we do, and of course they had fevers in a very different way. They would seek out warm environments and so forth to elevate their fever. Very fascinating work. Then along comes ecologists like [name?] for example, who did some fascinating work on behavioral thermoregulation in anoles and the islands of the Caribbean. And he found, he and his colleagues found what I think was an absolutely fascinating result, which is that the temperature to which an Anolis lizard would regulate its body temperature, for example, was very dependent upon the climate of risk that these creatures faced. And so, if you, if you had a lizard that was in, say an environment with a fairly dense canopy so that there were only, you know, small flecks of sunlight where an animal could raise its body temperature, those body, those regulated body temperatures were lower, and compared to lizards in an environment where the risk of predation was less. And so, what's the implication of that, you know? Like what's, what's happening is that, is that the regulation of the body temperature in those lizards is not so much the operation of a clockwork homeostasis. You can certainly build a case that it is, but really at the root of it, this is a cognitive phenomenon. Those lizards are looking around at their environment, they are, they are making a judgment, and I use that word in scare quotes, you won't be able to it on your podcast, but, you know, this is a cognitive judgment. And so, you know, what does that say about the clockwork homeostasis? It says to me that there is a fundamental cognitive dimension to this idea that simply cannot be ignored, and so, you know, that's where I think the clockwork homeostasis idea falls a bit short. Again, not to take away from the fascinating work that has been done on just how the homeostasis of lizard thermoregulatory systems works, I mean it's absolutely fascinating work. But it does lead to maybe a different conclusion about just what homeostasis is.
38:10
AW: I think that's a perfect segue into talking more broadly about your ideas on cognition. And so, in the book, you talk about organisms having a cognition about what's going on around them, and I think by that you don't mean that they're necessarily conscious of their local environments, and so, a bacterium for example could have cognition about its local environment. And what you mean by that, what I gathered, is that there's an imprint of the external environment on their internal processes that they can respond to. So, so, why do we need this idea of cognition, and why isn't it enough just to say, you know, in the same way that organisms are extended into the environment, the environments of course are extended and transduced into the internal spaces of the organism, and you know, the design of that transduction and the particular kinds of information that come in are organisms' ways of sensing and responding to their world.
ST: Well, I'm very pleased that you drew a bright line [or light?] between consciousness and cognition. That's one of the main, main points that I've tried to make in my writings about this, you know, consciousness is, it so easily creeps into...
AW: That's why we have to use scare quotes, right?
ST: Scare quotes, yes, you know. So, it easily creeps into our discussions and it just muddles everything. And so, and so, the way you described cognition is, is, is spot on, that there are means for sensing the environment, there are means for bringing about a change in, in, in the internal physiology of an organism at whatever scale we're talking about. And so, yes, that's what, that's what cognition is. When you start building in, of course, the other part of it, which is that these cognitive engines, as I call them, are connected to machines, I'm using that dread word there, machines, that can actually go out and modify the environment, then, then this notion of homeostasis starts to come in, because what is driving the particular modification of the environment that's going to be, that's going to be manipulating the flows of matter and energy through that organism, again at whatever scale we're talking about. And, and so, you know, when you're, when you're talking about again, what's governing that? Is it the mechanisms that are governing it, which'll then feedback and select on particular genes and so forth? Maybe. But the other aspect of it is that this is driven by this fundamental property of whatever organism we have to persist through time, and that's the broad definition of homeostasis that I, a broad definition of the outcome of homeostasis that I, that I develop in the book, you know. Homeostasis at its broadest, most expansive definition, is the persistence of the living system through time, despite whatever is happening in the outside environment. So, so, there are these feedbacks in there and all this kind of stuff. And again, we come back to the question of what's driving what? You know, is it, is it the mechanisms that are producing the homeostasis? That's probably in there, you know, it's probably an important part of it. But, but what's, what's really driving it through time? And this is where the whole connection to a vitalist philosophy comes in, you know. If you regard homeostasis as the fundamental property of living systems, then it's homeostasis that's driving it. It's this drive, or this striving towards doing whatever it has to do to persist is going to be what's driving it. And, you know, it's a different philosophical approach to it, different philosophical dimensions, but I think we're to the point right now in biology where those kinds of, those kinds of questions need to be asked.
42:24
MM: Hmm. Do you, are you aware Scott, of any empirical tests of this idea that cognition works in the way that you're portraying it? I mean, your sort of broad definition of cognition.
ST: Any empirical tests, I can't point to any. I can point to particular examples of, of, of where I think homeostasis per se is driving these things, and of course, the prime example that I use is the way that social insects mobilize to, to provide a regulated environment for themselves, you know, this extended organism idea, and I, the first book that I wrote, you know, "The Extended Organism," delves into many examples of, of how that works. The, the second book that I wrote, which was sort of a prequel to the book "Purpose and Desire," delved into many other examples of how homeostasis provides an explanatory framework for, for understanding design, for example. And so, as an example, if you look at, if you look at what goes into the apparent design of bones, for example, you know. Bones in many ways have aspects to them as if a mechanical engineer had built them. Of course, no mechanical engineer did, and of course there are many areas where the structure of bones departs from optimal design, you know, that's one reason why we have bones break and things like that. But what's at the heart of that, of course, is, is an interaction between different cell types that are continually remodeling bone, and of course, what's directing that? What seems to be directing it is, is a cognitive function where these cells actually monitor mechanical strain within the bones and then modify the bone structure to bring that into a certain, you know, range of acceptable strains and, you know, when you look at, you know, structure of vascular networks, or, or there's a, there's a particularly interesting work that's been done by John Torday [name spelling?] for example, in the design of bronchial networks, you know. That seems to be driven primarily by a sensation of local cells of what the local oxygen concentrations are, for example. And lungs will be continually remodeled, again around this maintenance of a particular oxygen tension around the cells of the, the cells of the alveoli and the parabronchi. So, so, you know, there's, there's lots of examples where it seems that homeostasis is at the heart of this, and where this, this idea that these agents are sensing a particular aspect of the environment and then modifying the environment to bring those within a certain narrow band of values, you know. I think the examples are abundant enough to where, again, I think we can start asking some really pointed and fundamental questions about what's driving what.
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46:11
MM: What's very exciting to me, and maybe this is from, you know, just being a big fan of Rosemary and Peter Grant, we had on the show a little while ago, you know the classic example of bill size evolution in the Galapagos. I'm asking about an example, and maybe if they're, the data aren't there yet, a system where you could really tinker with the cognitive abilities of whatever systems you wanted to work on within a population, and really trying to marry the, your ideas, with the more traditional, you know, modern synthesis ways of thinking about things. I mean, maybe there aren't examples like that, but, but where I get the impression that a lot of people might get tripped up about the portrayal of homeostasis, the emphasis that you're putting, is something like the, what are we going to measure? What are we going to do about it? And maybe we should say a little bit about intentionality as it arises from cognition, but... But for both of these things, the empiricists, what do we measure? How do we test these ideas and interlink different ways of thinking?
ST: Yeah, yeah. Well, as you know, it's a, it's experimentally very difficult, and you know, you have to have a willingness to undertake the challenge of doing that experimentally, and, and, you know, I, I have worked with some people who have, who have been exploring the idea of doing cognitive interventions in systems. So, for example, I just wrapped up a, a research project with some colleagues who work on robotics, and, you know, one of the things that they had been exploring is basically taking living systems and, and coming in with a set of tiny robots that can actually you know, modify the cognitive environment in ways independently. And, and, you know, that area is very much in its infancy. Of course, there's a lot of experimental ingenuity there, you know, one of the most interesting that I saw in recent years was in trying to understand how spider webs, for example, act as information media to spiders, you know, I've seen instances where people have put tiny magnets on the backs of the spiders and they introduce an oscillating magnetic field that feeds into the, feeds into the spider's own, own sensory system, what's going on, you know? But that's been mostly geared towards, you know, trying to understand how an insect landing in a spider web for example, conveys information to a spider that, oh, there's something caught in my web, you know. So, I think there's room for lots of experimental ingenuity there, I think the ingenuity is there, I've seen it done in some fascinating ways in other contexts. But you know, we first have to ask, be prepared to ask the question, you know? What is it that's driving what, and, and you know, as I've, as I've said, I think that we are at the point now where we can start asking some of these fundamental questions about what's driving what, and, and you know, the prevailing view, as, as we've seen, as we've discussed many times here for example, is that, is that the property follows from the mechanism, and maybe it's the other way around.
49:33
AW: I want to raise a different kind of issue or objection to this idea of, of cognition, and I think this relates to intentionality too, which we'll get to. But and I think, so Marty asked a very practical question about you know, how does this affect the kinds of science and the kind of measurements that we do? I guess my point is more of a philosophical one about why we even need this idea of, of cognition, and I want to circle back to what you said about cells in the vascular system modifying their form based on local oxygen tensions or flow regimes, and cells in the bones modifying their size and shape, and their sort of basic biochemistry based on the stresses that they experience. I would describe that not as cognition, but simply as, you know, cells exhibiting adaptive plasticity in response to their local environments. So, what's wrong with that, and why do we need this extra layer of something called cognition?
ST: Well, okay, so, the adaptive plasticity is an example of, of the property following the mechanism. Am I describing that fairly? Or...
AW: The property following the mechanism...maybe. Expand on that, what do you mean?
ST: Well, adaptive plasticity, for example. That's following from the mechanisms. In other words, you don't need to bring in aspects of cognitive function there. Is that a fair statement of your critique?
AW: Well it's, yeah, expect that the cells are sensing what's going on around them, and I think you might call that cognition. I guess what I'm saying is, why not just, why do we need this thing called cognition? Why isn't it just cells responding to their local environments?
ST: Isn't that what cognition is?
AW: Okay. Then maybe we're on the same page here.
ST: I think we're pretty much there, right?
AW: Well, objection resolved, okay, perfect. Okay, fine.
ST: Why wouldn't you have cognition?
AW: I just, I guess, philosophically I'm uncomfortable with that because it invokes a, you know, a kind of mysticism in the process that seems unnecessary and distracting.
ST: Okay so, again I'll put the question back to you. Are you entirely mysticism-free in that approach?
AW: I'm mysticism-free in the sense that I, you know, am a firm believer in the physical and chemical world as it exists, and the fact of biological phenomena emerging from, you know, truly measurable chemical and physical phenomena, if that's...
MM: He's going to get you again, you used emerging...you're dead in the water.
AW: Alright, fine.
ST: Well, let me, I won't spring any trap on you. But let me say, I too am a firm believer that life exists in a physical world, and a chemical world. So, there's no daylight between you and I on that score, Art. And so, you know, the, the thing that, that I am asking, I keep coming back to this, you know, what is driving what, you know? And I'd like to get away, actually, from the entire word mysticism, you know? I, you know, you mentioned earlier that...
AW: I'll strike it out of my future questions.
ST: Well, well, the point I'm trying to make is that, is that, you know, when you talk about the vitalist idea, the tendency is to invoke quasi-mystical types of phenomena there, and that's when one of the main, main, what's the word I want, main things that has been used to discredit the vitalist idea, and to, and to reinforce what most of modern biology is, which is focused entirely on mechanism, and, and material explanations for life. And, and that's fair enough, you know? It's been a very successful philosophy. I take nothing away from that. But, you know, is it really the whole philosophy? I'm not entirely sure, you know, and, and this is why I think the example of, of Claude Bernard and homeostasis is so fascinating, you know? His motivation in discovering or uncovering or maybe articulating that philosophy was entirely different from, from the way we think about it today. And even though he thought that, you know, he was a very credible experimentalist. He was also firmly embedded in, in understanding the mechanisms that were involved. The perspective was just that his perspective was backwards from what ours is today, and, and you know, we've had a very, very successful run as biologists, I think, with the perspective that the property follows mechanism, you know? It's been a spectacular century for biology, but we're getting to the point now where well maybe we need to start turning the rock upside down a little bit and looking at it in a different way, and that's my point.
54:53
MM: Yeah, yeah. Let's, I'd really like to summarize this in a way that, you know, gets all of these complex ideas, gets us all, everybody that's listening, in the same brain space. And I'm going to try this, but it might totally backfire because I think visuals might be necessary for this argument.
ST: Okay, okay.
MM: But in your, in your book, I'm sorry I think it was in your paper in 2016, but it was I believe also in the book, this, this cartoon of a sort of this standing thermodynamic wave. And, and really, the arguments that the concept of entropy and how that plays in here is really what drives it all home to me, and I think, you know, it makes me receptive to it in general. So, do you want to, do you want to sort of try to portray in words that image if such a thing is possible? And especially maybe touch on this concept that we've been dancing around but haven't done yet: intentionality. How might thinking about intentionality help us make sense of sort of, life riding this, the edge of the, this thermodynamic wave?
ST: The metaphor of the standing thermodynamic wave was, was actually inspired by, by the question I was asking myself which is, at the time I was writing this, this book, you know, what's going on around me? How is it that, you know, what, what's actually happening in the outside world there? And of course, we look around with our, with our eyes and our ears, and you know, we see the plants and the flowers and the birds, and the cats trying to catch the birds, and these kinds of things, you know? So, so, it's a conception of the environment that is very much driven by our cognitive interpretations of it. Namely, we have species, we have organisms, we have individuals, we have all those kinds of things going on there. But if you try to reconcile this with the thermodynamics of what's going on, then you come up with a little bit of a different picture, and, and you know, I was, I was trying to frame this in a way similar to how, I'm not making any comparisons of myself with Einstein, but, but how Einstein thought about, you know, what it would be like to ride a photon, you know, at light speed, you know? That, that kind of thing. So, I tried to imagine myself out there looking at life as a thermodynamic phenomenon. And, and what you have, of course, is you have sunlight coming in that is intercepted by plants to generate an amazing amount of order, you know, namely of course synthesizing glucose, which constructs the interface of bio...you know, you get the whole idea. And, and that, and that what happens there is you have this ongoing set of transactions of this, of the energy stored in that, in that initial capture of order. So, so, that's where the standing wave comes in. So, you've, you have a garden that seems to persist in time, and it persists in shape and form and all of that sort of stuff with time, and that's really kind of a standing wave, right? You have energy flowing in continuously, you have energy being used continuously to create order, you have a continual degradation of that order to disorder and heat, and, and everything that's happening with time through there is, is, is captured in this metaphor of a standing wave. You have an initial capture of energy to produce order, and then from there it's a continual cascade downwards. But the wave is standing because you're feeding it order-producing work as quickly as you are generating disorder, and so that's, that's where the whole issue of, of persistence starts to come in. And, and then the question becomes, well, you know, what's happening at the crest of that wave? Because that's where the real action is when we talk about life is happening, it's at that crest. And, and, and there you can then get into a metaphor of basically an ecosystem is the kind of shape of that, of that cresting wave of orderliness. And, and, and then, you know, well, what's shaping the shape of that crest? And that's where niche construction starts to come in, and, and I've gotten in trouble with a lot of my colleagues there because they, they object to this metaphor because it seems to detract from the, from the core concept of the species, you know, well, you know, where's the species in all of this, you know? Where are the individual organisms and so forth? And they're in there, but again we come back to the question, you know, what is it that's actually doing the shaping? Is it the crest of the wave that's doing the shaping, or are the organisms themselves doing the shaping, and if it's the latter, what is it that's governing how they shape it? And again, to me, what comes back to this is that, you know, these things are all seeking to persist through time despite all the turbulence in the environment that's going on around them. And that's where niche construction comes in, and that's where homeostasis comes in.
1:00:20
MM: Mmhmm. And how would you fit, where do you want to put the word "intentionality" there? Just to, it's been a central part of, of how you've represented your ideas. How, how does that fit in this portrayal?
ST: Well, intentionality is one of these uncomfortable subjects that, you know, causes a lot of heartburn for people. So, so, one of the things that I try to develop, started developing it in, in "The Tinkerer's Accomplice," and then developed it further in "Purpose and Desire," is that what actually is it that we mean by intentionality, you know? Is there a way to frame that in a manner that avoids some of the, some of the mystical, to use that word that's come up a couple times, mystical? Mystical traps that...
AW: At least it wasn't me this time.
ST: Well, you know, these are traps, you know, and, and it's a legitimate question to ask, you know, are you just invoking spooks here, or ghosts in the machine, or, or things like this? And so, one of the things that I think has to be done if we're going to be asking these fundamental questions is to have, have a sound conception of what intentionality is, and it's tied into cognition very intimately. So, so, what is it that we do when we have an intention, you know? Well, we, there's a conscious part of it definitely, kind of want to stay away from that a little bit, but, but, you know, this intentionality can be framed in a way that links the cognitive interpretation of the environment with the connection to the engines if you will that can modify the environment. And so, when you look at the burrows of, the [word?] burrows of mole crickets, for example, you know, these, these creatures build a burrow, it ends up in the shape of an exponential horn, and this helps project the, the sound of the call much further than it would otherwise. And if you look at what's happening during the construction of that burrow, the, the cricket burrows a little bit, emits a chirp, listens to it, and if it's not quite right it continues to modify its burrow until it gets the chirp that it "wants." Again, I'm putting up scare quotes here, that it "wants." Yeah, right. And, and that's, and that's kind of an intentionality, isn't it? And so, and so, if we want to try to develop a concept of what intentionality is that's, that can be kept independent from the kind of mysticism that, that tends to trip this up, then to me the simplest definition is, is, is coupling modification of the environment with the cognitive interpretation of the environment. And, and, that, that to me is an intentional process. That's where intentionality fits in.
1:03:28
MM: Mmhmm, mmhmm.
ST: And so, I'm trying to get away from these kinds of mystical traps.
MM: Yeah. I think that, so, no, Art, I know you want to sort of talk about the evolutionary implications, and we haven't even used the, one of my favorite terms, memory tokens, but Scott, let me get a half question, half comment in right here at the end. I think about what about this concept that really gets me excited is, to go back to standard evolutionary theory criticism where we started the conversation. The origin of life is a big missing component of standard evolutionary theory. We're not able to do that, and here, to think about homeostasis as one of the initial conditions of life is just really excited. We had Sara Walker on more than a year ago now, and she's made a big point about digital versus analog information, and what it's, what their roles are in life. People can listen to that episode if they care to hear about it. But, Art, I think this sort of worrying about mysticism, I get your point, but at the same time, the value that this mindset has for understanding and thinking about the origins of life is super compelling for me. But the question part of my now long soapbox cut is, do you think at any point in evolutionary history the sort of, how do I say this, the role of homeostasis, what was necessary at the initial inception of what was life, starts to get subsumed such that the original conditions change over? Like the, has life bringing in, or sort of taking in or accounting for all of its entropy with various different barriers, ultimately gotten to the point where the original conditions aren't so important anymore?
ST: The whole metaphor of the standing thermodynamic wave was actually part of an exploration of that very question, you know, what's the origin of life? What is it that drives it? And to answer your question directly, you know, if you look at the history of theories of the origin of life, you know, there've been some ingenious explorations of, of, of what happens in what I call the kind of warm little pond metaphor that, that, that Darwin evoked himself, you know, that if we're going to find clues to the origin of life, we have to look at the origins of complex metabolism, the origins of hereditary memory, and those kinds of things. And of course, the conundrum that origin of life research has faced is that, is that, you know, to get to those ingenious mechanisms, to drag them across the, the starting line, so to speak, none of them had ever really got to that point, and, and to my mind, one of the most, one of the theories that has approached it most closely has been Alexander Cairns-Smith's ideas of, of clay organisms being the foundation for this, and just to put in a plug for him, you know, to, to me, that's, that theory comes closest to understanding the origin of life. And he did so because he liberated himself from the standard idea that, you know, you have to have, you know, genes present, is it genes first, or is it metabolism first, or those kinds of things, and you know, by framing Darwinian principles in the way that he did, you know, I thought it was an area of tremendous insight. But again, are we, are we quite there? And from that approach, from the kind of bottom-up warm little pond approach that has been so prevalent and [word?], and again, taking nothing away from the ingenious work that's been done there, you know, but I still think we don't have a comprehensive theory for the origin of life yet, right? And so, I had the privilege of spending about six weeks with Addy Pross who's been doing some very interesting explorations of the origin of life, you know, and Addy is a, is a biochemist, and he titles his, his book, "What is Life," he subtitles it as, "How Chemistry Became Biology." And, and we had a lot of back and forth about this, you know, and of course he very much takes the, takes the bottom-up approach, the mechanistic approach to this, and you know, makes some very, very compelling arguments, but we had a lot of back and forth about that, and we finally ended up agreeing that, okay, well, all these, all these things are important, but what's actually going to drag life, this chemistry, across the starting line, and, and we decided that it had to be some origin of homeostasis. That was really the nub of the origin of life, and, and of course, then we get into the whole issues of intentionality and cognition, and things like this...
MM: Yeah, right, right.
ST: ...you know, and, and it's, you know, I have no answers. I have no answers, but I'm just trying to frame the question in this way.
[instrumental]
1:09:08
AW: Uh, so, I wanted to ask another question that follows up in sort of the style that I think appeals to you a lot, which is to think about directions of causal arrows, and you know, where, what's driving what. And you talk some in the book about the role of genes and whether they're driving evolution or whether they're following along from some other process. And, you invoke also the idea of extended organisms and genes as a form of memory token, and the idea that there are many other kinds of memories besides genes. So, so what, if we have to kind of come full circle in this conversation, what role do genes play in evolution?
ST: I, I coined the term memory token to try to put the whole issue of the gene and the DNA into a little bit of a different perspective, and, and by memory token, I mean that, that, that something that can be used to evoke a process of memory. And so, I, you know, I think that memory is very much of a process rather than a thing, and of course, and again, this is where my physiology hat starts to be important, you know, because DNA itself is a molecule, but okay, despite all of its interesting complexity, it only becomes interesting when you look at what DNA, or how DNA is embedded in, in the function, and how it determines function, or maybe influences function. And I think portraying DNA as a memory token helps put it into its proper, what I think is its proper perspective as one form of memory that is, that carries adaptation, for example, into the future. And, and so, that's, that's where I think the memory token idea starts to come in. Now, the emerging picture of what DNA does in there, especially with the discovery, very exciting discoveries, in my view, of how function can actually feed back into the interpretation of DNA sequence code into function, you know? We've basically closed the loop that was broken by the central dogma of molecular biology back in the 19...I forget when Francis Crick actually said this, whether it was early 1960s or late 1950s, you know, you, we've, we've seen the cartoon of the central dogma as there being a one way flow of information from DNA to RNA to function basically, protein synthesis, and so forth. And, and that fit in very well with the kind of mutationist notion of gene selectionism that has prevailed in the modern synthesis, for example. And the fact that there are these feedbacks of function onto, onto this sequence code and its interpretation, to me opens up a whole universe of different ways that we can conceive of the gene, and, and start asking ourselves a radical question, for example, of whether genes actually are a thing, or whether they're a metaphor past their sell-by date, you know? And so, and so, that's, that I think is how I would frame the issue.
1:12:54
AW: But wouldn't, wouldn't a skeptic say, like of course genes are a thing, we sequence them all the time. We know their products are permeating cells and have phenotypic effects, so, what do you mean?
ST: Skeptics do say that all the time, in fact, and, and, and so, that's not far off the mark, but you know, is the gene only a specifier, and, or is it a participant in a process that's, that not only specifies a process, but that the process can, can feed back and actually specify a gene. And, you know, there are certainly, you know, identifiable sequences of DNA that produce certain effects, and of course, you know, the example I always like to use is the cystic fibrosis gene, you know? There's one, there's a point mutation there that specifies a very clear departure of function which feeds back into all kinds of devastating consequences for the people who are, who are sufferers from that disease. So, so, there's no doubt that genes exist. I'm not saying…or let me backtrack on that. There's no doubt that there are sequences of DNA that are very powerful specifiers of function, but then you have vast stretches of DNA that we have no idea what they do, and, and you know, they're, this is where the whole conception of junk DNA comes in, which is something that's like the fingernails on the chalkboard to me when people say that, you know? Do we have a good explanation for what, what junk DNA does? Do we know what these non-coding, supposedly non-coding areas of, of DNA molecule does? And, and of course you build onto this the whole other layer of complexity with the structure of the genome, and the nucleosomes, and how those are unwrapped, and methylation, and you know, there's, there's this whole universe of, of understanding of how DNA, well the role that DNA plays in this that's, that's expanding, you know, at light speed, I think. And I think we're going to end up coming, coming to a more process-oriented understanding of what DNA is, rather than the kind of object...
AW: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that.
ST: ...object conception of the gene that is the, that is the origin of that, of that whole concept, so...
AW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me ask also about this, this concept of memory tokens. So, you know, I understand that and the concept, and the context of genes, right? They're, they're tokens of, of past adaptation, if you will. But if we had to broaden this idea and talk about what are memory tokens altogether, is that anything that's projected from the past into the future? So, you know, arrangements of my cells, you know, neural patterns in my brain. For other organisms, say termites, ecological inheritance of termite mounds...those are all memory tokens, right?
1:16:05
ST: I would say yes.
AW: Okay. And, and so, the idea is that all of these things are sort of moving forward and diversifying into the future and are subject to selection across all of those levels?
ST: They're subject to selection, but let's be very careful about what we mean by selection, you know. I, I, I think there's the standard interpretation of it, which is that you have a specified function, and then this selected from generation to generation, you know? And that may indeed be the correct way to do it, but, but of course, selection has always been prone to the criticism of what's doing the selecting, you know? That's been one of the, one of the, the brick bats that's always been thrown at the Darwinian idea, which is that okay, you say natural selection, but, you know, that doesn't really tell you what's doing the selection. Now, I would say that yes, there is selection going on, but when you start building this conception of the extended organism melded with niche construction theory, and melded with this idea of homeostasis, there's selection going on all right, but the thing doing the selecting is the organism itself, and there's an element of choice and intentionality involved in that, which, which I think gives heartburn to most Darwinists.
MM: Scott, would you go as far as Mary Jane West-Eberhard and others have, to say that genes are followers most of the time? I don't know about most of the time, we don't have to put the specifics on there, but often.
ST: Yes, I think so. I think so. And that's an example of the reversal of perspective that I think is very important to be asking, absolutely.
[instrumental]
1:18:00
MM: So, so we sort of want to, to have you explain why some of the latter sections, latter sections of the book took the form that they did. And I think the one that stands out to me most is that the title of one of the chapters is "The Hand of Whatever." And some other people have sort of picked on you for being funded by the Templeton Foundation, and these other sorts of entities. I mean, what, where does this come from? And I guess, just to be as blunt as possible, what are your perspectives on intelligent design?
ST: Well, I, I guess the first collision I suppose is the word to use...
MM: Collision! That's good choice.
ST: ...came after the, the publication of my second book, "The Tinkerer's Accomplice," and, and this was where I tried to get a handle on the whole concept of biological design, and, and how homeostasis falls into that. And, and, this came out a little less than a year after the whole blow-up at the Dover school district in Pennsylvania...
MM: If you need a refresher, this was a case in Pennsylvania where a group of parents sued the local school board that it required the teaching of intelligent design.
AW: A judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for a school district to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution because it promoted a religious viewpoint.
ST: ...and I was sort of dragged into this, you know, we had, you know, people who would refuse to review the book, rather pointed comments about me personally, and also the nature of the book as a consequence of that, and, and despite I think the third sentence in that book being "This is not about intelligent design theory," I ended up being branded as a kind of a [word?] for the Discovery Institute. And, and so, as a consequence of that, some of the intelligent design people, notably Steve Meyer, reached out to me and said, well, we're having this conference, why don't you come down? And so, I thought, well, you know, I might as well get to know these guys, and, and without endorsing intelligent design theory, that experience opened up to me an interesting dimension to the whole debate about evolution in biology. At this conference, there was not only you know, the standard intelligent design advocates there, but also a whole range of other people, including people like Stuart Kaufman, for example, who has, you know, as we were speaking about the origin of life earlier, you know, he has some fascinating ideas about the origin of metabolism and so forth. So, so, it was intellectually a very high level, and if nothing else, I came away with, with a feeling of what Thomas Nagel has since articulated, which is that, you know, we need to not treat this whole idea as demon spawn, which is, which is, you know, I, I think an unfortunate reaction to it, but, you know, let's engage the ideas intellectually, let's do that. And, and so, and so, one of the things that, one of the motivations behind writing the book "Purpose and Desire" was to do just that, you know? And, and so, and so, you know, when I, when I speak to these people, you know, I portray myself as a friendly critic, but a critic, nonetheless. And, and so, and so, from there, you have to ask, well, you know, what is it in this whole doctrine of intelligent design theory that, that might have some validity that we can work with, alright? And, and so, that's, that's, that's part of the motivation, and, and there's a public motivation behind this as well. This is one of the reasons why I went to the commercial press for the publication of "Purpose and Desire," because I think this is a conversation that we need urgently to have in our society, you know? Right, right now it's a very, very polarized kind of, kind of conversation. And, and it's, it's polarized in part because no one wants to engage the other sides on an intellectual level, you know?
AW: Sure, sure.
ST: And so, and so, when I talk about intelligent design theory, I take pains to distinguish between the critique and the conclusions that they draw, you know? And if you look at the critique, one of the most interesting experiences to me that I had was I went through and I was reading one of Steve Meyer's books and then I was reading one of Stuart Kaufman's books who's also a critic of the modern Darwinian idea, and almost point for point their critiques were identical, you know? And so, and so, maybe there's a valid critique there. Where I depart from them is that you know, they, they draw a particular conclusion, or rather I should say they kind of leave a conclusion unstated, inviting everyone to draw what they are arguing as the correct conclusion, which is basically a, a rewarmed argument from design philosophy, you know? They're, they are coming into this from a very platonic idea, with you know, the platonic idea of the demiurge, which of course leads into the, into the, into the justification of the Christian conception of Gd that we saw throughout medieval history. And so, that's where they are going, you know? So, I describe them really as Platanists [?], bringing this, and you know, we can have lots of conversations about the role of Platanism in biology, including the conception of the species. We probably don't want to get into that here, but...
MM: Not so much.
1:23:55
ST: ...you know, but, but it's a philosophical issue, and, and, and, you know, there is another way of looking at this, and of course, we all know that Aristotle you know, had a very different conception of things from Plato, you know? He, there were some similarities, but of course, where Plato puts, you know, the striving of living things out there in the ether somewhere in some disembodied ideal, Aristotle is very much steeped in, in, in the kind of internal motivations that can produce, that can produce the structure and form and reproduction of the animals and these kinds of things. And so, you know, if I was to describe myself as anything, it's actually as an Aristotilian kind of approach to this, you know? I think there is intelligence and cognition and purposefulness at work. That's the conclusion that I've come to, but it's not, you know, some disembodied ideal, it doesn't in any way lead to a conception of the Christian Gd. It actually is a return to the kind of Aristotilian conception of internal mechanisms that help produce form and function and those kinds of things...
AW: Right, okay.
ST: ...and so, that's the, that I would regard is the principle distinction.
MM: Okay. So, the, the, something that you said a few minutes ago, I just wanted to ask in a pointed way. I understand the sort of perspective of, there's skepticism, you know, you have your skepticism of Darwin, original Darwinian thinking and modern synthesis and all that good stuff. And then folks from the Discovery Institute and otherwise, they do as well. But you mentioned that something on the order of intelligent design theory and the types of ideas that it can bring. So, what are those, what are the sorts of things that aren't of the form that you were just talking about? What is the specific sort of more scientific perspectives that complement the arguments that you're trying to make?
1:25:54
ST: That I'm trying to make?
MM: Yeah, yeah. The Stuart Kaufmans and the others that you referred to are offering to the conversation.
ST: Sure, sure, yeah. I would say that what I'm, what I have tried to do is to, is to, frame what I consider to be a valid critique of the standard evolutionary theory idea in a way that, that we as scientists, specifically as physiological scientists, can, can, let's see, what's the word I want, that we as scientists can bring a properly scientific perspective to it, you know. And so, if you look at the writings of some of the intelligent design critics of Darwinism, and I point to Steve Meyer as probably the most articulate, intelligent critic of modern Darwinism, you know, they, they are basing their critic, their critique, on interesting, properly scientific ideas. And, and so, that's one of the reasons why they have such resonance amongst the, amongst the public and in these debates about how we should properly teach evolution in schools and these kinds of things. But again, to make the distinction between the critique and the solution, I think there's room for a scientific exploration of those critiques that could for example, incorporate things that I think are absolutely obvious and fundamental about life, which is that life behaves purposefully. Life behaves intentionally. Those words have become very uncomfortable words for us to use right now, but there's a, there's an unfortunate tendency to, to, to alienate the study of evolution from the phenomenon of life itself. And so, and so, I see, I see this physiological approach, and trying to come up with a sound understanding of what intentionality and cognitions and purposefulness is, can do a lot to help us understand evolution better than we do now.
MM: Yeah, yeah. And I'm totally in agreement there. I think that the difference is, I didn't hear you say anything about the other folks that are part of this conversation that are quite good with the criticism, but offering the new path forward that's filling the void of what was critiqued, that's a big difference. Well, I don't know Meyer's work, but I'm just saying, it's one thing to criticize where the flaws are, and I think I would, I would be in agreement without reading the material, I expect I would be in agreement based on the conversation we've had and your books that I've read, but, but I tell my graduate students this all the time. It's to be expected in science that you tear down everyone else's edifices because it's how we make progress, but if you can't offer an alternative, you're sort of just being mean. I mean, you're only doing one part of what's expected of you as a scientist.
1:29:01
ST: I am absolutely in agreement with that. And we've corresponded with that, and of course that's, that's one of the motivations behind writing those books, you know? Which was to try to lay out an alternative, a constructive alternative to, to the critique.
MM: Okay.
AW: I want to jump in also with a, a question and comment about intelligent design. So, you know, you have these sort of allusions at the end of the book to intelligent design, and I think, you know, that causes a lot of heartburn among people because, you know, typically the way people are using the phrase intelligent design is to invoke the hand of Gd as the, as the designer. And, you know, we've just spent almost two hours talking about...
MM: Good stuff, talking about great stuff.
AW: ...homeostasis and cognition and intentionality. And so, is that what you mean when you say that's the thing that's doing the intelligent design? Or are you invoking the hand of Gd? And, and maybe one more way to, to ask this is in the context of Jerry Coyne's critique of your book. He wrote this rather scathing online review, and suggested that, you know, your conception of homeostasis, that homeostasis was a code word for Gd, essentially. So, where do you stand in all of that?
ST: Um, well, let's deal with the, with the intelligent design issue first, and again we come back to the distinction between the critique and the solution. The critique has valid aspects, you know, I'm not going to deny that there is some validity to the critique, and in part, the validity comes from other people who are, you know, mainstream, very innovative thinkers, scientific thinkers. The critique parallels that. And so, and so, the solution really is different from the critique. Now, when I use that title in the book, "The Hand of Whatever," you know, I wasn't being evasive about you know, "whatever" being code for, code for the platonic Gd, you know, I was trying to say that well, you know, there's, there's a hand there that's somewhere, and, and, and the, the hand, if you will, can be something that is, that emerges from the fundamental property of life, which I argue is homeostasis, and, and, and, you know, you can build around that, I think, a scientific alternative to, or answer to the critique, Marty, getting back to your, to your comment about, you know, it's easy to tear down but not so easy to build up. And so, and so, that's, that's the motivation there. Now, with respect to Jerry Coyne, that's an, that's an interesting one because as you said, he wrote a rather scathing commentary on the book, and me personally actually, actually without ever having read the book, and, and he as much as admitted it. So, he was literally judging a book by its cover and, and without bothering to engage...
AW: Although he did subsequently read the book.
ST: Well, I called him out on that, and he rather churlishly read the book, but, but he was obviously, you know, he had made up his mind. And, and so, and so, that's the whole Jerry Coyne. And I think that's pretty much where it stopped, you know? He, he judged a book by its cover, I called him out on it, and you know, he then read the book, but I think he missed the point of the book because he didn't bother to engage it, really. And so, that's, that's my, that's my take on that. Now, part of the latter, part of the epilogue of the book, for example, just to introduce, maybe take the conversation in this direction, you know, I did mention that our public understanding of evolution right now is very, very polarized, and, and it's, it's not constructive. I think there are important questions that we have to be asking about how our understanding of evolution helps us understand broader ideas like, what's our place in the universe? What's our role? You know, these kinds of things, where do we come from? And we can't have a, a very constructive argument about this right now because the debate is so polarized, and, and in part, Jerry Coyne illustrates this in a very, a very pointed way, you know? He has his ideas, he's going to pass judgment on whatever comes at him based on those ideas, but is not willing to step out of that, of that, of that bubble. And I have to say, it happens on the other side as well, you know? It happens with the intelligent design controversy. It happens with the whole creationism controversy. And so, you have this very, very polarized public aspect of what evolution is. And, and I think there's a middle way. I think the controversy could move forward or be resolved and move forward in a constructive way if we thought about all of this differently, and if people would come out of their bubbles.
1:34:37
MM: Well, I wanted to, I wanted to sort of end on a, on an obviously scientific note, if we can, and ask you Scott, where do you think the role of homeostasis will be in our research and thinking about biology, or maybe specifically evolutionary biology, in the next 10 years or so?
ST: My hope is that, that people will start shifting their perspective a bit when they are formulating research questions. We touched on this briefly earlier in our conversation, you know, what, what are the experimental or other kinds of tests that we could, that we could bring to bear on this question? And I think there are some elements of this out there. We spoke about the whole issue of robotic intervention into, into, you know, a system of information flow, or what have you, and so, my hope is that you know, we would turn the perspective around, and you know, my, I'm optimistic about that because as you know, we scientists, we like to turn over rocks, and you know, you know, explode conventional wisdom and those kinds of things, you know? That's the most exciting thing about what we do. And so, and so, my hope is that, that, that that will continue. For evolution, I hope that we can actually have, start having a positive public conversation about what drives evolution, and, and you know, the theory behind it, the philosophical foundations of it, because of course, as you know, this is a big part of the public controversy over it. Any way that we can, you know, any way that we can just move forward with this, you know? I, I would love to see evolution being part of the school curriculum in a way that is not so emotive and, and controversial, you know? Because there's fascinating things in there, and I don't think we're having those conversations right now.
[instrumental]
1:36:56
AW: We ended up talking to Scott for more than two hours. This was the longest Big Biology episode we've ever produced, and we did that on purpose. We wanted to give ourselves time to understand his ideas about homeostasis and intentionality, and also to push back on areas where we didn't see eye to eye.
MM: Clearly, evolution doesn't happen because organisms want it to. But Scott argues that intentionality does have a role in evolution. If biologists don't include intentionality, homeostasis, agency, and the like in our research because they feel like old-school vitalism, we can miss important understanding for how life works.
AW: We hope that our interview with Scott sparked some productive conversations. We would love to hear what you think about his ideas. How do you think intentionality fits into evolution? If you think Scott is way off-base, then how would you respond to his ideas?
MM: We just set up a new system for you to send us your opinions as voice memos. You can either click the link in the show description for the episode to send us a message, or you can go to anchor.fm/bigbiology and click on the message link for the episode. We'll talk over what you have to say, and we might even include your voice on the show.
AW: You can also join the conversation on social media. Tweet at us and tell us what you think about this episode. Our Twitter handle is @big_biology.
MM: Thanks for listening to this episode. Remember that you can support the show by making a recurring donation on our Patreon page, patreon.com/bigbio, or you can make a one-time donation on our website, www.bigbiology.org. Please help us out! Without your support, we can't produce the shows you love. And even if you can't spare a few dollars, tell your friends about us on Twitter or other social media.
AW: Thanks to Matt Blois for producing this episode. Mike Levin runs our social media channels and produces the Student Spotlights. Dana Baxter helps with background research, and Steve Lane manages our website.
MM: Thanks to the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida, and the College of Humanities and Sciences at the University of Montana for support.
AW: Music on this episode is from Poddington Bear.