Do cells have goals? | with Melanie Challenger, Nick Lane & Philip Ball
The Royal Institution
45,978 views
Is purpose something our brains invented, or is it built into life itself?
Three thinkers take on one of science's oldest unresolved questions: what does it mean to be alive? Author Melanie Challenger is joined by biochemist Nick Lane and science writer Philip Ball for a live inquiry that begins with Richard Dawkins's claim that nature exists without purpose, and asks whether recent biology points somewhere different.
Along the way: why scientists still can't agree on a definition of life, the synthetic "spud cells" that replicate their genomes, divide and even compete without being alive, how ideas about life moved from Aristotle's living body through the 18th-century "man a machine" to the gene-centric view of the 20th century, how energy flow and hydrothermal vents may hold the key to life's origin, and what agency, xenobots and brain organoids mean for how we think about AI.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: A Live Inquiry Into What Life Is
03:06 Does Nature Have Purpose? The Dawkins Challenge
07:08 Why Nobody Can Define Life
09:12 Building Life From Scratch, and Why AI Raises the Stakes
13:52 From Aristotle to "Man a Machine"
25:18 Energy Flow: What a Dead Whale Is Missing
30:16 Aristotle's Living Body and the Search for the Agent
41:05 Is Biological Agency Real?
46:55 How Life Works: Membrane Voltages and Hydrothermal Vents
54:01 Why Science Sidelined the Body
58:16 Beyond the Genetic Program
1:00:09 Scaling Agency: Xenobots, Organoids and Ethics
_________________________
About the speakers:
Melanie Challenger writes, researches, and broadcasts on the history of ideas, the history and philosophy of science, and the relationship between humans and the living world. She is the author of How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human, among other works, and host of the podcast The Psychosphere. Melanie is internationally active in bioethics, deputy co-chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and Vice President of the RSPCA. She is also an award-winning poet and librettist for opera and oratorios, and a National Geographic Explorer.
Philip Ball is a writer and the author of many books on science and its intersections with culture, including How Life Works (2024). He was formerly an editor at Nature, and was awarded the Royal Society's 2022 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy or social functions of science.
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Director of the UCL Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution (CLOE) at University College London. His research is on how energy flow shapes evolution, from the origin of life to sex and even consciousness. He has published more than 100 papers and five celebrated books on life's origins. His awards include the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to UK audiences.
________________________
This was filmed at the Royal Institution on the 16th of July 2026.
________________________
Melanie's book, Alive: what life is, how it works, and why it matters: https://geni.us/63sV1MB
Ri Members can watch the audience Q&A that followed this talk:
________________________
The Royal Institution is an independent charity dedicated to connecting people to the world of science.
Subscribe for more talks, lectures and demos: https://bit.ly/RiSubscribe
Become a channel member to watch exclusive Q&As and support us in making more science content for everyone: @theroyalinstitution
#RoyalInstitution #WhatIsLife #Biology #OriginOfLife
________________________
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20 Comments
debate sounds like what Michael Wedin
explained brilliantly in his *Mind and
Imagination in Aristotle* (1988), in the
sense that we as humans think because
we have a cognitive function to think.
Thinking it is not explained on our agency
level, but on the lower, thinking, cognitive
level. The same happens with perception,
nutrition, memorizing, moving, dreaming,
etc. Cognitive Psychology is Aristotelian.
Now we have to add to that the new revolution:
Evolutionary Psychology, which is adding to
Cognitive (Naturalistic) Psychology the
adaptations to explain mind's several modules
and functions. Aristotle plus Darwin.
Cf. Evolutionary Psychology, The New Science
of the Mind, by David Buss (1999, 2025).
(min. 32:40) I would say that 'heat' is what
he thinks gives matter life. For example,
in his treatise "On Youth, Old Age, Life and
Death, and Respiration" he says (ROT 1995):
'Everything living has soul, and it, as we
have said, cannot exist without the
presence of natural heat [thermótētos]'
(470a20) and 'It is always to some lack of
heat that death is due' (478b32). This heat
that animates passive matter can be extinguished
without balance by the cool or cold, the
other element together with the dry and air,
the four elements (our four forces today).
WHO BENEFITS FROM LIFE?
Is it the Organism/Individual, the Planets, the Universe or the Creator if any?
My thoughts
- The organism eventually dies maybe as food or later. Reproduction and persistence of life seems to be the priority of its creator.
- The planet can survive without life.
- The creator, if it exists, most likely designed life to persist against all odds.
I think Life benefits the creator, not the organism. We as organisms don't have a grand purpose aside from reproduction. We were created to be male and female and the intent is for reproduction.
Which leads me to another troubling question.
WHY DOES THE CREATOR WANT LIFE TO PERSIST? WHAT DOES IT GET OR BENEFITS FROM LIFE?
Target tracking is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Maximizing mutual information is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Semantic entropy (increasing variance) is dual to semantic syntropy (decreasing variance) synthesizes semantic invariance (knowledge) -- the Hegelian dialectic.
Making predictions or expectations is a syntropic process leading to semantic invariance -- teleological.
Semantic invariance is absolute or true knowledge (a target, goal or objective!
Recognition (encoder, compression, syntropy) is dual to generation (decoder, decompression, entropy) -- variational autoencoders or the Hegelian dialectic.
Minimizing complexity maximizes your accuracy -- free energy is dual.
Free energy or learning minimizes your complexity and maximizes your accuracy (ELBO) leading to semantic invariance or knowledge (syntropy).
Syntropy (knowledge) is dual to increasing entropy (lack of knowledge) -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Divergence (entropy) is dual to convergence (syntropy).
Entropy is the uncertainty in your prediction or knowledge (syntropy) -- duality.
Certainty (predictability, syntropy) is dual to uncertainty (unpredictability, entropy) -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Increase is dual to decrease.
The Kullback Leibler divergence/convergence is dual as it is anti-symmetric -- forwards is dual to backwards.
Minimizing the KL divergence is a convergent process -- syntropic.
The word syntropy was used by Einstein hence it is the correct word to use in this context.
Synthetic a priori knowledge -- Immanuel Kant.
Knowledge is dual according to Immanuel Kant.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- large language model.
Semantic invariance or knowledge is a a goal or target -- teleological.
Learning is the process of increasing your knowledge -- teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
The Krebs energy cycle is dual -- clockwise is dual to anti-clockwise.
Do cells have goals? | with Melanie Challenger, Nick Lane & Philip Ball
The Royal Institution
45,978 views
Is purpose something our brains invented, or is it built into life itself?
Three thinkers take on one of science's oldest unresolved questions: what does it mean to be alive? Author Melanie Challenger is joined by biochemist Nick Lane and science writer Philip Ball for a live inquiry that begins with Richard Dawkins's claim that nature exists without purpose, and asks whether recent biology points somewhere different.
Along the way: why scientists still can't agree on a definition of life, the synthetic "spud cells" that replicate their genomes, divide and even compete without being alive, how ideas about life moved from Aristotle's living body through the 18th-century "man a machine" to the gene-centric view of the 20th century, how energy flow and hydrothermal vents may hold the key to life's origin, and what agency, xenobots and brain organoids mean for how we think about AI.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: A Live Inquiry Into What Life Is
03:06 Does Nature Have Purpose? The Dawkins Challenge
07:08 Why Nobody Can Define Life
09:12 Building Life From Scratch, and Why AI Raises the Stakes
13:52 From Aristotle to "Man a Machine"
25:18 Energy Flow: What a Dead Whale Is Missing
30:16 Aristotle's Living Body and the Search for the Agent
41:05 Is Biological Agency Real?
46:55 How Life Works: Membrane Voltages and Hydrothermal Vents
54:01 Why Science Sidelined the Body
58:16 Beyond the Genetic Program
1:00:09 Scaling Agency: Xenobots, Organoids and Ethics
_________________________
About the speakers:
Melanie Challenger writes, researches, and broadcasts on the history of ideas, the history and philosophy of science, and the relationship between humans and the living world. She is the author of How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human, among other works, and host of the podcast The Psychosphere. Melanie is internationally active in bioethics, deputy co-chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and Vice President of the RSPCA. She is also an award-winning poet and librettist for opera and oratorios, and a National Geographic Explorer.
Philip Ball is a writer and the author of many books on science and its intersections with culture, including How Life Works (2024). He was formerly an editor at Nature, and was awarded the Royal Society's 2022 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy or social functions of science.
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Director of the UCL Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution (CLOE) at University College London. His research is on how energy flow shapes evolution, from the origin of life to sex and even consciousness. He has published more than 100 papers and five celebrated books on life's origins. His awards include the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to UK audiences.
________________________
This was filmed at the Royal Institution on the 16th of July 2026.
________________________
Melanie's book, Alive: what life is, how it works, and why it matters: https://geni.us/63sV1MB
Ri Members can watch the audience Q&A that followed this talk:
________________________
The Royal Institution is an independent charity dedicated to connecting people to the world of science.
Subscribe for more talks, lectures and demos: https://bit.ly/RiSubscribe
Become a channel member to watch exclusive Q&As and support us in making more science content for everyone: @theroyalinstitution
#RoyalInstitution #WhatIsLife #Biology #OriginOfLife
________________________
The Ri is on Facebook: Facebook: royalinstitution
and TikTok: TikTok: ri_science
Listen to the Ri podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
Donate to the RI and help us bring you more lectures: https://www.rigb.org/support-us/donat...
Our editorial policy: https://www.rigb.org/editing-ri-talks...
Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.