Biological existence and its theoretical complexities.

Podcast: University of Minnesota Press (LS 26 · TOP 10% what is this?) Episode: Biological existence and its theoretical complexities. Pub date: 2026-09-11 Get Podcast Transcript → powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin argued that organisms do not adapt to their environments, but rather that organisms and environments co-evolve and construct one another. Two new books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Posthumanities series take up this decree in bold, imaginative ways: The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI by Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek; and Natural Lection: Cultures of Evolution by Jonathan Basile. Here, series editor Cary Wolfe brings all three authors together into a vastly fascinating conversation about experimental biology and theoretical biology; construction and deconstruction; language and interpretation; life sciences and living systems; technoscience and philosophy; and their real-world entanglements. Cary Wolfe is founding director of 3CT: Center for Critical and Cultural Theory and Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor Emeritus of English at Rice University and fellow at the Berggruen Institute. He is editor of the Posthumanities series at University of Minnesota Press and author of several books, including Jagged Ontologies; Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters, Conversations; and What Is Posthumanism? Jonathan Basile is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto. He is author of Natural Lection: Cultures of Evolution; Tar for Mortar: “The Library of Babel” and the Dream of Totality and Virality Vitality. Giuseppe Longo is Research Director Emeritus at the National Center for Scientific Research in France and the author or coauthor of five books and more than one hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles. Adam Nocek is associate professor of the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies at Arizona State University. He is coauthor of The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI, coeditor of The Lure of Whitehead, and author of Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology. EPISODE REFERENCES: Richard Levins Richard Lewontin Jean Lassègue Jacques Derrida Charles Darwin Alan Turing Erwin Schrödinger Conrad Hal Waddington James Watson and Francis Crick Evelyn Fox Keller Kurt Gödel François Jacob William C. Wimsatt Mary Jane West-Eberhard Henri Poincaré Jennifer Doudna Charles Darwin Watson and Crick Galileo Galilei Friedrich Nietzsche Carlos Sonnenschein Ana Soto Alfred North Whitenead Ernst Cassirer Melinda E. Cooper / Life as Surplus Philip Mirowski J. Craig Venter Stuart Kauffman Natural Lection and The Organism Is a Theory are available in the Posthumanities series from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening. The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from University of Minnesota Press, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.