Since the Scientific Revolution, the ideas of purpose and directionality in nature have had no clear place in science, in spite of the fact that living organisms exhibit purposive behavior. Darwin’s revolution in biology was considered the death-knell to the idea of natural teleology, and attempts to introduce purpose or design through divine agency in science have been resisted by the scientific community and failed to influence mainstream research. Yet the current revolution in biology makes the concepts of purpose, meaning, and agency central to understanding life, and signals a radical shift not only in biology but science as a whole, ending the mechanistic paradigm and centering Life itself for the first time in 400 years.

The purpose of the Meanings of Life Project: The New Biology is to advance, consolidate, and communicate this revolution of purpose and agency in biology, 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 to scientists and the public.

The project brings together a working group of leading scientists, scholars, and industry leaders to advance the new scientific vision of life revealed by modern biology, and synthesized in Philip Ball’s new book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology. 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.