Organisms are not machines (Ep 82)

<p>Why shouldn’t we think of living things as machines? What is and what isn’t an organism?</p> <p>In this episode, we talk to <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=5gxpRPYAAAAJ&amp;hl=en"><u>Dan Nicholson</u></a>, a philosopher and biologist from George Mason University about his new edited volume, <a href="https://bigbiologypodcast.tumblr.com/post/681213615554134016/everything-flows-edited-by-dan-nicholson-and-john"><u>"Everything Flows: Toward a Processual Philosophy of Biology"</u></a>. In it, he and colleagues argue that biological systems more resemble flames and tornadoes and other dynamically stable systems than clocks or other human-designed things. Dan thinks that life is better understood as flows of energy and matter, which means that trying to reduce biological things into smaller parts, a popular practice in biology known as reductionism, will ultimately fail because it misses the stream-like nature of life. In the show today, we discuss these ideas, what Dan calls a <em>processual philosophy</em> for biology, including what it means for evolution, medicine, and more.</p> <p>Cover art: Keating Shahmehri</p> --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bigbiology/message