Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

299 | Michael Wong on Information, Function, and the Origin of Life


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Living organisms seem exquisitely organized and complex, with features clearly adapted to serving certain functions needed to survive and procreate. Natural selection provides a compelling explanation for why that is so. But is there a bigger picture, a more general framework that explains the origin and evolution of functions and complexity in a world governed by uncaring laws of physics? I talk with planetary scientist and astrobiologist Michael Wong about how we can define what "functions" are and the role they play in the evolution of the universe.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/12/16/299-michael-wong-on-information-function-and-the-origin-of-life/

Michael Wong received his Ph.D. in planetary science from Caltech. He is currently a Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Scienceʼs Earth & Planets Laboratory. He is in the process of co-authoring two books: A Missing Law: Evolution, Information, and the Inevitability of Cosmic Complexity with Robert M. Hazen, and a revised edition of Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach with Jonathan Lunine.

  • Web site
  • Carnegie web page
  • Strange New Worlds podcast
  • Wong et al. (2023), "On the Roles of Function and Selection in Evolving Systems."
  • Wong and Prabhu (2023), "Cells as the First Data Scientists."


See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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