​

​THE PROJECT​

​

The Meanings of Life Project: The New Biology is led by Institute Director, Samuel Loncar, and Research Director, Philip Ball, author of How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology (University of Chicago Press), and it brings together a working group of leading scientists, scholars, and industry leaders coming together to advance the new scientific vision of life revealed by modern biology, and synthesized in Ball’s book.

 

The project convenes around this major synthesis, and aims to identify a new narrative for the field through a multi-disciplinary integrative approach that seeks to unite fundamental research at the level of genes, molecules and cells to notions of agency, purpose, and meaning in living entities.

 

THE PURPOSE

​

The purpose of the project is to seek ways of understanding and communicating how living organisms function at many different scales, look for the new conceptual and metaphorical frameworks that do justice to the richness of “post-genomic biology,” help to inform medical and health sciences, and reveal the special and wondrous nature of living organisms.

​

Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, was the first core member of the New Biology Project. We are grateful to Sir Paul and the Francis Crick Institute for hosting our first conversation.​​​​​​

​​