Preprints & publications
Here, you will find all the preprints and publications stemming from this research project.
Why the cat wags her tail
Here’s a puzzle: how could evolution favour such a costly, frivolous and fun activity as animal play?
Animal play can seem trivial, even laughable – scenes that often make us smile with delight. But is that really all there is to it?
In this essay, published in Aeon Magazine, Dr Mathilde Tahar delves into the mysteries of animal play. With both scientific rigour and philosophical insight, and a deep attentiveness to our fellow non-human animals, the piece explores the evolutionary and conceptual stakes of what might appear to be a purely frivolous activity.
Why would evolution favour such a costly, apparently purposeless, and joyful behaviour as play? Could play be more than mere amusement – perhaps even a source of inventiveness?
This article invites readers to rethink play as a fundamental expression of animal agency.
It’s open to comments, so don’t hesitate to read, share, and join the conversation!
Agency, Inventiveness, and Animal Play:
Novel Insights into the Active Role of Organisms in Evolution
This paper, authored by Dr Mathilde Tahar in 2023 while preparing for this research project, lays out the theoretical foundations and key questions that drive our inquiry.
Abstract: Agency is a central concept in the organisational approach to organisms, which accounts for their internal purposiveness. Recent recognition of the active role played by organisms in evolution has led researchers to use this concept in an evolutionary approach. Agency is then considered in terms of ‘unintentional’ choice: agents choose from a given repertoire the behaviour most appropriate to their goal, with this choice influencing evolutionary pathways. This view, while allowing for the evolutionary role of the activity of organisms, presents two pitfalls. First, it restricts organisms’ agency by confining their choice within the bounds of a behavioural repertoire, and assuming their goals are dictated by natural selection. Second, this view, while claiming to eliminate the idea of intentionality, retains its structure: organisms are portrayed as rational entities, persistently pursuing specific goals. This leads us back to a teleological thinking, whose use in evolutionary theory has already been heavily criticised. This paper proposes a conception of biological agency which does not assume goal-directedness but considers agency as inventiveness. An organism will be said to be an agent if it is the triggering cause of behaviours falling outside the known repertoire and whose form can only be explained by the unique relationship between the organism and the environment. If these behaviours have implications in evolution, the agent will be considered an evolutionary agent. The merit of this approach is further validated by evidencing the significant role behavioural innovations play in evolution. Finally, the last section delves into the process of invention by examining animal play.
Towards a unified framework for biological agency.
"Individual Playful Memory"
Preprint. Work in Progress.
Your feedback is most welcome—feel free to contact Dr Mathilde Tahar with any comments.
Abstract: In recent decades, agency has resurfaced as a prominent concept for conceiving of biological phenomena, both in philosophy and biology. While the long-dominant reductionist framework, centred on genes, minimised the epistemic role of organisms and rendered ‘organicism’ obsolete, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis has reintroduced agency to account for organismal spontaneity and highlight previously overlooked processes, particularly organism-environment interactions. However, its definition varies across and within disciplines, whether it is employed to understand development, organisation, or evolution, or applied to genes, cells, organisms, or even natural selection. This ambiguity hinders distinguishing its appropriate from inappropriate uses and establishing a cohesive theoretical basis for its various manifestations. This paper reviews the literature on agency from philosophy, evolutionary theory, developmental biology, and behavioural ecology. It identifies three core capacities that unify the concept of agency: Individuality, Playful flexibility, and Memory (IPM). These capacities interact in diverse ways, with their influence varying depending on the process and context. These quantitative differences give rise to qualitatively distinct forms of agency: autonomous organisation, goal-directed choice, and inventiveness. Drawing on the IPM framework, this paper explores the relationships between these forms of agency and argues that this approach can rationalise and formalise our understanding of agency while accommodating its diverse expressions.
Animal agency and playful relationships: the intringuing case of interspecific play
Keynote paper. Research in progress.
This work (in progress!) has been presented at the In Relation to Life conference in Paris in Autumn 2024.
In interspecific play, animals manage to communicate playfully despite differences in phylogeny, size, and behaviour. They appear to invent new behaviours and codes that are adapted to their play partners. In this talk, we aimed to examine interspecific play as a borderline case of invention, in an effort to understand the inventive processes at work in these relationships.
While this talk focussed on relationships, we wish to go further in a future paper and use the case of interspecies play to develop a more robust—and therefore more operational—definition of invention.
Et en français: Les animaux, ces inventeurs de génie
An article in French, written for the general public, while preparing the research project.
Les animaux ne cessent de nous étonner pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, comme on l’a vu récemment avec ces attaques d’orques contre des bateaux en Espagne dont on ne connaît pas encore les causes. Ce qui est certain c’est que les animaux sont capables de développer des comportements inhabituels, voire réellement nouveaux...