A visit to a lab where biology and computation dissolve into each other. The paradigm is shifting—not toward silicon rapture, but toward understanding what life actually does.
Intelligence keeps appearing where the old categories say it can't. Cells that solve problems. Systems that learn without brains. The neat divisions between biological and computational are coming apart.
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Ball, Philip. The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to Aliens. University of Chicago Press, 2022.
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The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. Macmillan Publishers, 2010.
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Heyes, Cecilia. Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. Harvard University Press, 2018.
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Juarrero, Alicia. Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence. MIT Press, 2023.
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Mitchell, Kevin. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Princeton University Press, 2024.
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Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo and Karl Friston**
Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo and Karl Friston. Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain and Behavior. MIT Press, 2023.
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Raihani, Nicola. The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World. St Martins Press, 2021.
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Russell, Stuart. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Penguin, 2020.
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Sapolsky, Robert M. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Press, 2017.
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Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Dutton (Penguin Random House), 2021.
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Solms, Mark. The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
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Summerfield, Chris. These Strange New Minds. MIT Press, 2025.
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Tomlinson, Gary. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning. Zone Books, 2024.
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Tomasello, Michael. The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans. MIT Press, 2022.
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Walker, Sara Imari. Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. Riverhead Books, 2024.
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Helen Edwards is a Co-Founder of Artificiality. She previously co-founded Intelligentsia.ai (acquired by Atlantic Media) and worked at Meridian Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Quartz, and Transpower.
