The term "workshop" originally means a designated space (“shop”), where artisans and crafts- people gather to work on specific tasks, build their skills, and create products together. Following this tradition, this final workshop for the JTF project “Pushing the Boundaries” brought together a group of interdisciplinary thinkers from biology, neuroscience, and philosophy in order to dissemi- nate project results, and to foster collaborations within an emerging interdisciplinary community to further explore and expand our current theories of the organism and its role in evolution.
The workshop took place over five days (from Jun 29 to Jul 4, 2025) at the beautiful Berghotel Tulbingerkogel near Vienna. Participants included established contributors as well as early-career researchers interested in an understanding of living organization and organismic agency. Put together by the project’s core researchers (Kevin Purkhauser, Paul Poledna, Rami Koskinen, Andrea Loettgers & Johannes Jaeger), it was facilitated by The Perspective Studio (Marcus Neustetter & Johannes Jaeger), providing an interactive, and adaptive framework to guide discussions in the plenum and in small topical groups. Instead of traditional scientific presentations, we selected participants to provide short discussion starters according to the theme of each workshop day:
Day 1 (June 30): Pushing Boundaries — Formal Approaches to Biological Organization & Agency
The workshop took place over five days (from Jun 29 to Jul 4, 2025) at the beautiful Berghotel Tulbingerkogel near Vienna. Participants included established contributors as well as early-career researchers interested in an understanding of living organization and organismic agency. Put together by the project’s core researchers (Kevin Purkhauser, Paul Poledna, Rami Koskinen, Andrea Loettgers & Johannes Jaeger), it was facilitated by The Perspective Studio (Marcus Neustetter & Johannes Jaeger), providing an interactive, and adaptive framework to guide discussions in the plenum and in small topical groups. Instead of traditional scientific presentations, we selected participants to provide short discussion starters according to the theme of each workshop day:
Day 1 (June 30): Pushing Boundaries — Formal Approaches to Biological Organization & Agency
- To open the workshop, participants introduced themselves by placing their names and fields of expertise on a map that was constructed with tiles in the central space of the seminar room. After lunch, we complemented this map with participants’ questions. This evolving map served as anchor/guide for centering our discussions throughout the week.
- In the morning, the core team introduced the aims and results of the project:
- A new view of life (and the world) is not only needed in biological research, but also in society more generally, as the exploitative and reductionist machine view lies at the heart of our current interlocking psycho-social, (geo)political and ecological crises.
- To counter the currently prevalent machine view, which comes paired with a naïve kind of realism, we develop a new realist and naturalist approach on the basis of a perspectivist or pragmatist account of science as a skillful modeling practice.
- A better understanding of the nature of life requires (a) a new process-oriented framework of organizational emergence and complexity, (b) a focus on the dynamics of living organization (based on the evolution of context-dependent constraints), and (c) a naturalistic account of organismic agency and its role in open-ended evolution.
- In addition, we discussed the ramifications of the above insights for distinguishing natural intelligence and agency from artificial “intelligence” and “agency.”
- A new view of life (and the world) is not only needed in biological research, but also in society more generally, as the exploitative and reductionist machine view lies at the heart of our current interlocking psycho-social, (geo)political and ecological crises.
- The afternoon was dedicated to organization, with discussion starters on the history of the concept (Dan Brooks), autopoiesis (Moritz Kriegleder), organizational closure (Matteo Mossio), and Alan Love introducing his JTF framework on the science of purpose.
- We concluded the day by organizing small-group discussion sessions for the next day, focused around the general role of theory in biology, ecology and life, and the concepts of constraints and emergence.
Day 2 (July 1): Complexity & Emergence — Computational vs. Organizational
- We opened the day with an exercise in collective drawing and arranging small bricks on a surface. What do the emergent patterns tell us about our group dynamics?
- The theme of day two was to contrast traditional computational approaches to complexity and emergence with organizational perspectives (e.g., Rosen, Kauffman, or Wimsatt).
- It opened with two discussion starters in the morning: one on the concept of Rosennean complexity (Johannes Jaeger) and another on the notion of organizational emergence (Kevin Purkhauser).
- The morning continued in four small discussion groups on the topics of
- What is theory in biology? What roles does it play in biological research?
- What does “emergence” mean? What kinds of emergence are there?
- What are constraints and what role do they play in life and its evolution?
- What is the role of ecosystems in organismic biology?
- What is theory in biology? What roles does it play in biological research?
- Marcus opened the afternoon with a workshop, followed by a presentation of a relational model of the self-manufacturing cell (Jan-Hendrik Hofmeyr), and the continuation of our small-group discussion.
- To finish up the day’s schedule, each small group presented the outcome of their work, and we put together topics for the small groups for discussions the next day.
- After dinner, Marcus Neustetter performed a projection onto the side of the hotel (above the swimming pool) and we heard an improvised musical performance.
Day 3 (July 2): Evolution with(out) Boundaries — Context-Dependent Constraints
- On day three, our attention shifted to evolutionary theory. We tackled how constraints (both internal and external) influence evolutionary processes and underlie the open-ended nature of evolution.
- Discussion starters in the morning illuminated the concept of context-dependent or nonholonomic constraints (Paul Poledna) and of teleodynamics, the self-manufacturing behavior of living systems (Terrence Deacon). In the afternoon, Denis Walsh argued for an active role of organismic agency in open-ended evolution.
- Small-group discussions revolved around the following five topics:
- Theory, part two: are theoretical principles important/applicable in biology?
- What is a useful, and semantically meaningful, concept of “information”?
- What concept of “complexity” is most useful/applicable in biology?
- How does normativity enter the realm of physics at the origin of life?
- What is the contribution of all the above to biological evolution?
- Theory, part two: are theoretical principles important/applicable in biology?
- In the morning and after lunch, Marcus Neustetter made us play within and with the rules of board and card games that he provided to us.
Day 4 (July 3): Beyond the Age of Machines — A Science for Limited Beings in a Large World
- Day four was dedicated to Johannes Jaeger’s book project “Beyond the Age of Machines”, a central deliverable of the “Pushing the Boundaries” project. The PhD students of the project, Paul Poledna and Kevin Purkhauser, also presented the monographs they are writing.
- The discussion starter by Kate Nave introduced the free-energy principle and criticized its claims to be an explanatory and modeling framework suitable for living systems.
- The four small-group discussions of the day revolved around:
- A deeper dive into the role of the environment and ecology.
- A discussion (finally) about the meaning of “agency.”
- The role of the history of biology in the marginalization of the organism.
- How to restructure education of biological researchers to remedy this issue.
- Marcus Neustetter led the morning exercise and made us venture into the woods around the hotel after lunch to build small worlds using a given set of objects and a cardboard box.
Day 5 (July 4): Closure — Discussion and Outlook (July 4)
- The final half-day of the workshop provided conclusion, synthesis, and a way forward.
- Our wrap-up of the week was preceded by our completion of the “mind map” occupying the central space in the lecture hall (an exercise led by Marcus Neustetter), and a discussion starter by Andrea Loettgers, which reminded us that models are not just tools but epistemic artifacts that actively mediate the production of knowledge.
- To plot the way ahead, we organized participants into groups of two to three people according to common themes they wanted to explore further. We encouraged novel combinations of people who had not collaborated before. After a short discussion time, each group presented their respective vision.
- We concluded with a round of feedback.
- The conference ended with us spinning a web of connections over the central mind map, and Marcus Neustetter projecting onto the resulting entangled structure.
In summary: during this week, we “pushed the boundaries” of what we understand about agency, complexity, and emergence, and their role in evolution.
This workshop marks only the beginning of a longer-term development: the emergence of a new transdisciplinary research community. Through our unusual workshop format, we encouraged rigorous, creative thinking, we brought together diverse perspectives, and we actively fostered new interdisciplinary collaborations. Our main aim was to plant the seeds for developing more nuanced approaches to fundamental concepts in biology and philosophy, challenging existing (and often unspoken) assumptions around agency, organization, and emergence. Ultimately, it should be clear that we must adopt more dynamic and situated frameworks to reach a deeper understanding of the nature and meaning of life.
This workshop marks only the beginning of a longer-term development: the emergence of a new transdisciplinary research community. Through our unusual workshop format, we encouraged rigorous, creative thinking, we brought together diverse perspectives, and we actively fostered new interdisciplinary collaborations. Our main aim was to plant the seeds for developing more nuanced approaches to fundamental concepts in biology and philosophy, challenging existing (and often unspoken) assumptions around agency, organization, and emergence. Ultimately, it should be clear that we must adopt more dynamic and situated frameworks to reach a deeper understanding of the nature and meaning of life.
