Using Material Models to Investigate Agency, Innovation, and Directionality in Evolution

Improving upon Aristotle’s account of agency has eluded philosophers and biologists. This project develops a pragmatic approach for learning about agency by investigating the dynamics underlying the evolution of agency (rather than constructing definitions of agency). We use a minimal concept of agency to design experiments employing 3 material models. The biological entities in these models effectively identify and choose evolutionary pathways that encompass novel directions for change. We hypothesize that the presence of eco-evolutionary feedbacks is central to evolutionary innovation: preexisting ecology shapes evolutionary outcomes, which subsequently shapes ecology; and these feedbacks open new pathways that can be selected. To investigate how agency can originate in simple non-cellular systems, we trace its emergence in a new model for experimental evolution which consists of single-stranded DNA. To investigate how agency evolves in preexisting complex systems, we follow the coevolution of microbial species in a laboratory community. To investigate how the evolution of agency can be constrained we track evolution in a field model in which there has been significant evolutionary change without the dramatic innovations that have occurred elsewhere. These models enable us to investigate evolution as it is occurring. Together, they provide a broad scope for exploring and depicting the dynamics underlying the evolution of agency. This project demonstrates how material models can be used to play roles attributed to the use of mathematical, computational, and verbal models. To explore how material models can be used to play these roles, philosophers and scientists regularly meet as the empirical research is conducted. This conceptual work will in turn influence and inform the design of experiments. This project will deliver 4 symposia and 10 conference presentations and 10 published articles.