Quote of the Week
(May 12, 2025)

What we see once we start following out all the interactions at a molecular level, is not some mechanism dictating the fate or controlling an activity of the organism. Rather, we observe an organism-wide, narrative coherence — a functional, end-directed, story-like coherence that we cannot elucidate in terms of strictly physical interactions that make no reference to the meaning of events. Only so far as they are caught up in and sensitive to this functional story do the individual molecular players find their proper roles.

The misrepresentation of this organic and rational coherence in favor of supposed controlling mechanisms is not an innocent inattention to language; it is a fundamental misrepresentation of reality at the central point where we are challenged to understand the character of living things.

(from Chapter 9, “A Mess of Causes”, in Organisms and Their Evolution — Agency and Meaning in the Drama of Life)

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