In the 1980s, scientist J.L. Marx conducted a series of experiments in Xenopus (an aquatic frog native to sub-Saharan Africa) and found that “mundane” biophysical events (like chemical reactions in the cells, mechanical pressures inside and on the cells, and gravity) can switch genes on and off, determining cell fate. Animal bodies, he concluded, result from an intricate dance between genes, and changing physical and environmental events.

Neither chickens nor humans are mere algorithms. Our brains have a body, and that body is situated in a world. Our behaviors emerge because of our worldly and bodily activities. Living beings are not just absorbing and processing the data flows of our environment; we are continuously altering and creating our own—and each other’s—environments, a process called “niche construction” in  evolutionary biology.