Quote of the Week
(October 7, 2024)

When a deer is grazing in a meadow, its glimpse of a vaguely canine form in the distance changes the meaning of everything from the flowers and grass the deer was eating, to its own internal digestive processes, to the expression of its genes. This happens, not because the distant form is exerting some strange physical force upon the deer, but because that form becomes part of a now suddenly shifted pattern of meaning.

(from Chapter 8, “A Mess of Causes”, in Organisms and Their Evolution — Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life)

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