An Evolutionary Story of Agency

This open access book exposes the role of "agency" in the history of life. Agency is understood as the capacity of an organism to act, make decisions, and exercise control over its actions in order to achieve goals or to navigate and interact with its environment. The question of agency has become a hot and controversial topic in Biology and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences. This volume studies said topic through its historical expressions, investigating how and why it has appeared, and what was its selective advantage in the past, assuming a continuity in how it has evolved in different life forms. By also explaining how and why agency has evolved and become more complex in some branches of the tree of life, the authors show how life has made its way on our planet with forms of agency as diverse as those shown by bacteria, plants or animals, which are the most sophisticated and complex agents. The book is of great interest to a broad audience, whether philosophically or biologically inclined, interested in understanding fundamental aspects of how life works and in seeking explanations for why life has been so successful on planet Earth.

Autorentext

Álvaro Moreno is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science of the University of Basque Country and he is currently Associate Researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). His research activities have been developed in the areas of Philosophy of Biology, Artificial Life, Complex Systems and Philosophy of Cognitive Science. He has developed, together with numerous collaborators, a distinctive interdisciplinary research line on Biological Autonomy, which bridges philosophy and science, which has materialized in the creation of the IAS Research Centre for Life, Mind & Society, in San Sebastian (Spain). He is currently leading a subproject on the Origin and Evolution Agency, within the wider research Project Agency, Directionality, and Function: Foundations for a Science of Purpose , funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Juli Peretó is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (University of Valencia) and researcher at Institute for IntegrativeSystems Biology I2SysBio (UV-CSIC), his focus spans the evolution of metabolism, minimal cell concept, bioprospection of inhospitable habitats, and the history of ideas on the natural origin and the artificial synthesis of life. Teaching metabolism with an evolutionary perspective, he coordinated an Erasmus Intensive Program Origin, Evolution and Future of the Biosphere and held leadership roles in the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life ISSOL. Elected Fellow of ISSOL, he co-founded the biotech spin-off Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence and contributed to books on synthetic biology, origins of life and scientific gastronomy. His latest pursuit blends evolutionary biology with gastronomy.

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 Minimal Agents and the Emergence of Life.- 3 A Big Bang of Agency: The Prokaryotic Way of Life.- 4 Eukaryotic Agency: Looking for the Path of Agency Complexification.- 5 Multicellular Agents: the Challenge of Combining Body Organization and Behavior.- 6 Metazoans: An Explosion of Agency.- 7 Epilogue.