Preprints & publications
Here, you will find all the preprints and publications stemming from this research project.
Agency, Inventiveness, and Animal Play:
Novel Insights into the Active Role of Organisms in Evolution
This paper, authored by Dr Mathilde Tahar in 2023 while preparing for this research project, lays out the theoretical foundations and key questions that drive our inquiry.
Abstract: Agency is a central concept in the organisational approach to organisms, which accounts for their internal purposiveness. Recent recognition of the active role played by organisms in evolution has led researchers to use this concept in an evolutionary approach. Agency is then considered in terms of ‘unintentional’ choice: agents choose from a given repertoire the behaviour most appropriate to their goal, with this choice influencing evolutionary pathways. This view, while allowing for the evolutionary role of the activity of organisms, presents two pitfalls. First, it restricts organisms’ agency by confining their choice within the bounds of a behavioural repertoire, and assuming their goals are dictated by natural selection. Second, this view, while claiming to eliminate the idea of intentionality, retains its structure: organisms are portrayed as rational entities, persistently pursuing specific goals. This leads us back to a teleological thinking, whose use in evolutionary theory has already been heavily criticised. This paper proposes a conception of biological agency which does not assume goal-directedness but considers agency as inventiveness. An organism will be said to be an agent if it is the triggering cause of behaviours falling outside the known repertoire and whose form can only be explained by the unique relationship between the organism and the environment. If these behaviours have implications in evolution, the agent will be considered an evolutionary agent. The merit of this approach is further validated by evidencing the significant role behavioural innovations play in evolution. Finally, the last section delves into the process of invention by examining animal play.
Making Sense of Biological Agency: Choice, Organisation, Invention
Writing in Progress. Preprint expected online this autumn.
Through this paper, Dr Mathilde Tahar aims to synthesise the various definitions of biological agency and to identify the unifying criteria behind this diversity. The goal is to pinpoint the criteria that unify the concept, while exploring how their different articulations produce diverse forms of biological agency. Beginning with a broad definition — where agency implies an action for which the individual agent appears as the full cause— and reflecting on the concept’s assorted applications within biological contexts, the paper will first delineate the criteria of biological agency (individuality, playfulness, memory), synthesising them through the concept of "Individual Playful Memory" (IPM). Then, the essay will analyse how I, P and M are articulated through various expressions of biological agency, tentatively classified into three categories: organisation, choice, and invention. Finally, the connections and differences between these three forms of agency will be interrogated, and their respective implications for scientific practice will be explored.
[Provisional title] Inventiveness across and between species: the intringuing case of interspecific play
Research in progress.
We will be presenting our work at a conference in Paris in Autumn 2024, with the aim of developing a paper based on this talk.
In interspecific play, animals manage to communicate playfully despite differences in phylogeny, size, and behaviour. They appear to invent new behaviours and codes that are adapted to their play partners. In this article, we aim to examine interspecific play as a borderline case of invention, in an effort to understand the inventive processes at work in these relationships and to develop a more robust—and therefore more operational—definition of invention.
Et en français: Les animaux, ces inventeurs de génie
An article in French, written for the general public, while preparing the research project.
Les animaux ne cessent de nous étonner pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, comme on l’a vu récemment avec ces attaques d’orques contre des bateaux en Espagne dont on ne connaît pas encore les causes. Ce qui est certain c’est que les animaux sont capables de développer des comportements inhabituels, voire réellement nouveaux...