
This is the purpose of "Life" (Part 2) - Dr. J. Scott Turner, DemystifySci #389
Today we sit with the old questions and let them breathe again, tracing the places where life begins to feel like a presence rather than a computer. Turner walks through the fault lines of modern biology, pointing to the quiet mind-like shimmer in organisms shaping their worlds. The conversation moves slowly, deliberately, as if the universe itself were leaning in to listen. By the end, the idea of agency feels less like a taboo and more like something we’ve sensed all along.
Part 1: https://youtu.be/MOr-FZ_ogTI
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00:00 Go!
00:08:43 – Gene-Centered Evolution Takes Over
00:11:10 – McClintock’s Discovery Breaks the Mold
00:14:19 – Genes as Interpreted Signals, Not Dictators
00:18:11 – From Mutationism to Epigenetics
00:20:41 – Dawkins and the Selfish Gene Frame
00:24:30 – Life Strives for More Than Survival
00:27:47 – Culture as a Force in Evolution
00:30:28 – Termites and Environmental Inheritance
00:32:22 – When Literalism Distorts Science and Religion
00:35:22 – Beyond Gould’s Magisteria
00:39:02 – The Aiming of Organisms
00:41:58 – Desire, Agency, and Evolutionary Trajectories
00:44:14 – Human Exceptionalism and the Myth of Evolution’s End
00:47:46 – Cultural Barriers to Integrative Biology
00:49:39 – The Transcendence of Materials
00:52:10 – Purposeful Behavior in Termite Societies
00:55:35 – Preference and Purpose in Termite Architecture
00:59:14 – Human Metaphysics and Cognitive Niches
01:04:19 – Cracks in the Evolutionary Consensus
01:06:39 – Biology as the Bridge Between Facts and Meaning
01:08:58 – The Missing Definition of Life
01:10:59 – Biology’s Identity Crisis
01:12:36 – Rethinking Life and the Universe
01:15:08 – The Origin of Life Problem
01:16:28 – From Chemistry to Cognitive Emergence
01:20:27 – Life as a Gradual Flame
01:23:13 – Agency as the Heart of Biology
01:25:42 – The Scientific Struggle With Agency
01:27:04 – Turner’s Work on Organisms, Design, and Purpose
#consciousness, #agency , #evolution, #originoflife, #emergence, #complexity , #cognition , #purpose , #epigenetics , #philosophy, #meaning, #physicspodcast, #philosophypodcast
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