Arvin Ash

Do all living things have free will? Or are they controlled by DNA and other forces? (2021x8)

Udgivelsesdato: Mar 17, 2021

Get your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here: https://try.magellantv.com/arvinash - It's an exclusive offer for our viewers! Start your free trial today. MagellanTV is a new kind of streaming service run by filmmakers with 3,000+ documentaries! Check out our personal recommendation and MagellanTV’s exclusive playlists: https://www.magellantv.com/genres/science-and-tech Link to Philip Ball's new book: "How to grow a human": http://t.ly/Qm4d How low in complexity can you go and still have free will. Does a bacteria have free will? Do single cells have it? What do we know about agency in living systems? I collaborated with physicist and author Philip Ball, a former editor at the prestigious journal Nature. who has written extensively on this and other subjects. What’s the difference between a living thing and one that’s not alive? Scientists don't agree. But we can say living organisms do things to suit themselves. They rearrange their surroundings for their own purposes. Even single living cells act with agendas. Macrophages in your immune system chase a bacterium across the slide, switching course as its prey tries to escape, before finally gobbling it up. But is this an anthropomorphic way of describing a biological process. Single cells don’t have minds of their own – so can they really have goals? Biologists often insist that cells and bacteria aren’t trying to do anything. it all comes down to genes, chemistry and physics – no aim or design, but which fool our narrative-obsessed minds. This is "agency" - the ability of living things to alter their environment (and themselves) with purpose, and an agenda. It might help us to understand what “free will” means. Agency supplies what genetic hard-wiring cannot. It’s not feasible to program complex living organisms for every situation they might encounter. For example, the hare is trying to escape from a wolf by being unpredictable. An organism that reacts differently in identical situations sta