{"id":118662,"date":"2021-01-18T21:22:36","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T05:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life"},"modified":"2021-01-18T21:22:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T05:22:36","slug":"the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life","title":{"rendered":"The biological research putting purpose back into life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Biologists balk at any talk of \u2018goals\u2019 or \u2018intentions\u2019 \u2014 but a bold new research agenda has put agency back on the table.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Animal immune systems depend on white blood cells called macrophages that devour and engulf invaders. The cells pursue with determination and gusto: under a microscope you can watch a blob-like macrophage chase a bacterium across the slide, switching course this way and that as its prey tries to escape through an obstacle course of red blood cells, before it finally catches the rogue microbe and gobbles it up.<\/p>\n<p>But hang on: isn\u2019t this an absurdly anthropomorphic way of describing a biological process? Single cells don\u2019t have minds of their own \u2013 so surely they don\u2019t have goals, determination, gusto? When we attribute aims and purposes to these primitive organisms, aren\u2019t we just succumbing to an illusion?<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, you might suspect this is a real-life version of a classic psychology experiment from 1944, which revealed the human impulse to attribute goals and narratives to what we see. When Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/why-story-is-used-to-explain-symphonies-and-sport-matches-alike\" rel=\"noopener\">showed<\/a> people a crudely animated movie featuring a circle and two triangles, most viewers constructed a melodramatic tale of pursuit and rescue \u2013 even though they were just observing abstract geometric shapes moving about in space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biologists balk at any talk of \u2018goals\u2019 or \u2018intentions\u2019 \u2014 but a bold new research agenda has put agency back on the table. Animal immune systems depend on white blood cells called macrophages that devour and engulf invaders. The cells pursue with determination and gusto: under a microscope you can watch a blob-like macrophage chase [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}