Purposeful Homeostasis: Agency, Adaptation, and the Many Little Lives Within Us

In this thought-provoking conversation, Ruth Lorensson and Thomas Pals welcome back Scott Turner, author of Purpose and Desire, to explore the fascinating intersections of niche construction theory, homeostasis, and human wellness. Together, they unpack how living systems—down to the cellular level—act with agency, intentionally shaping and being shaped by their environments.

From Walter Cannon’s classic definition of homeostasis to Aristotle’s ideas on purposefulness, the discussion bridges evolutionary biology, biophysics, and wellness science. Scott Turner explains why adaptation is more than mechanistic feedback loops—it’s about purposeful striving at every level, from microbiomes to ecosystems. The trio dives deep into the “many little lives” metaphor, revealing how cellular conversations influence our overall health, vitality, and resilience—and how disruption in those conversations can lead to illness, cancer, and even addiction.

Key topics include:

• The agency of living systems and its role in adaptation and wellness
• How niche construction theory challenges modern Darwinism
• Why homeostasis is misunderstood and how it truly operates
• The parallels between ecosystem health and human health
• The role of interoception in restoring balance and fostering well-being

Whether you’re a wellness professional, leader, or simply curious about the science of thriving, this episode offers a fresh lens on what it means to be well—and how to consciously participate in the adaptive conversations that sustain life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

Ruth Lorensson  9:02  
We're talking about purpose and desire and homeostasis and So Tom, I'm going to throw it over to you because I know you've got some like, really, like insightful questions that we're going to that are really going to lead this next part of this episode. So do you want to to kick us off?

Thomas Pals  9:57  
Oh, yes, please. It's kind of going to pick your brain. So thank you. Last time in the prior episode, we were talking about, we're not mechanisms. We are we you can drop oil in and have beneficial effects, but also those other effects that, oh, we weren't looking for in this mechanism, because it is so complex, and we are living organisms holistic, and we exist with purpose, and we are talking about that. And my thoughts since then, and would love to hear your thoughts on this, regarding purposefulness in a living being. Walter Cannon said, with regard to homeostasis, the living being is stable. It must be so in order not to be destroyed, dissolved or disintegrated by the colossal forces, often adverse, which surround it. He further elaborated that, in a sense, it is stable because it is modifiable. The slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism. So when it comes to stability, we humans are all about wanting it, but often create so much instability that's the difference between wellness and a lack of wellness. And you wrote in your book, the challenge of niche construction theory into modern Darwinism is serious and, in my view, compelling. Where the challenge is most strenuous, however, is how niche construction theory admits the phenomenon of agency back into evolutionary thought. And with agency comes homeostasis intentionality and purpose so this agency of organisms, this agency that we have as organisms, to shape and be shaped by environments, and how this impacts homeostasis, intentionality and purposefulness, and like busy little beavers, we humans are both shaping and shaped by our environments, micro environments, like our minds and bodies, family and friend networks, as well as macro environments, like our places of work and play, as well as communities and the nations and the Earth itself in which we live, and like the busy little beavers, We purposefully go about this interaction for good or ill, we'd love your thoughts on how purposeful homeostasis can inform our efforts. That's a lot, I know, but

Scott Turner  12:30  
okay, well, there are a lot of questions in there. Maybe, maybe we could start with just an encapsulation of what niche construction theory is, because that's, you know, maybe your listeners might not, might not be aware of what it is, just to encapsulate the essence of it when we speak of adaptation. And Walter Cannon did speak about this in terms of changeability to circumstances and those kinds of things. This usually translates into the organism adapting to the environment and and that's the conventional way we think about adaptation. You know, it gets cold we are the hairs rise up on the on across the body, or the feathers fluff up on a bird and so forth, and and so that's the bird adapting to colder conditions. The colder conditions are imposed and and, of course, the opposite happens when conditions warm up. You know, birds molt their feathers and all these other kinds of things. So that conceives as adaptation, as being one way the organism adapts to the environment. Where niche construction theory comes in is it adds an additional wrinkle to that, in that in that you're now talking about organisms adapting the environment to themselves and and so the very simple example is, if we want to live in an environment that is colder than our own physiology can adapt to, then we just adapt the environment. We build shelters, you know, we go hunt animals for their skins and all these other to provide insulation and all these other kinds of things. So the really radical idea behind niche construction theory is that not only do organisms adapt to environments, but also organisms adapt environments to themselves and and, and this. This is a challenge to not only how we think about physiology of organisms, but it's also a challenge to how we think evolution works, and we can get into that a little bit later, if you like. Now that's niche construction theory. At the heart of niche construction theory is a concept that actually is kind of troublesome, not only to organismal Organismal Biology, including medicine, but also ecology, evolutionary biology and so forth. And that's in this word adaptation, you know, and and adaptation is kind of a troubled concept in in not only in modern physiology, modern medicine, but also in evolutionary thought. I think we mentioned last week, I spoke about the the cybernetic model of adaptation, you know. So that's the common way that we think about homeostasis of living organisms, you know. And the classic example is, well, all right, so we have a regulated body temperature, and therefore we have a thermostat inside our bodies that's works just like the thermostat does on the wall, walls of our own houses and and so the steadiness of the internal environment there is a result of a machine that regulates that that that temperature. It senses the temperature. It puts out signals to, you know, turn open windows or turn on the heater or all all those kinds of things. But that's not really the way that adaptation works, and it's not really a very good way to think about adaptation when we talk about niche construction theory. So as I said, you know, if, if, if we feel cold, that's a subjective feeling. We do things to modify the environment so that we don't feel cold anymore, and, and in that case, it's a very conscious thing, but, but the important word there is want. You know, I feel cold, therefore I want to be warm. And this is where agency comes in, in the niche construction world. Organisms are not machines. They are actual agents that that act purposefully and and when we talk to when I talk anyway to my fellow evolutionists, they say, Okay, well, this word want is okay. It's a convenient shorthand. It's a convenient metaphor for what's really going on down there, which is the operation of a machine. But I think that's denial. You know, when you talk about wanting, that's a very real phenomenon. You know, there's no apparent wanting, there's no apparent purposefulness, which is the way that the which is the fallback position for a strictly mechanistic approach to biology, wanting and desire and purpose is actually real. And the big challenge for for scientists across the board is to figure out some kind of rational understanding of where this purposefulness and intentionality comes from. And you know, we're sort of making progress there, but there's still this hurdle that if you're going to be a scientist, you must be mechanistic. If you're going to introduce these kind of nebulous concepts like wanting and purpose or desire, then you're disqualified for being a scientist. And I think that's a major shortcoming of most of most modern biology, most modern thinking about evolutionism and so forth. And the key concept that we don't really have a handle on is this concept of adaptation. What is it? How does it work? How does homeostasis fit into it? And I think I mentioned last time that homeostasis is, in my opinion, probably the most misunderstood and trivialized concept in modern biology.

We seem to have lost your sound. Tom,

Thomas Pals  19:16  
oh, I turned my microphone off because there we are. So this idea of purposefully pursuing well being is in our very nature,

Scott Turner  19:27  
and that yes, so just in our nature, but the nature of every living thing,

Thomas Pals  19:33  
yes, and our integration into that, our interaction with that, and pursuing that, is a function of homeostasis, but we as human beings so office so often purposefully pursue things that are not in our well being, and that strikes me as a strange anomaly for us as humans, as opposed to those termites, yeah, etc. So your thoughts on that,

Scott Turner  20:07  
you know, you phrased it correctly, that, that, that this, this striving, derives from homeostasis. This ties into what I mentioned last time, which is that, you know, the cybernetic metaphor looks at homeostasis as the outcome of a mechanism, whereas, if you delve into Claude Bernard's own writings on it, he said that, but no, the mechanism derives from the homeostasis. You know that it's actually just the opposite. And so that's a mode of thinking. That's that that's very hard for people to get their heads around and and this is one of the reasons why I have argued that homeostasis is a trivialized and misunderstood concept, all right, and so and so. What's at the heart of homeostasis, well? Or how do these mechanisms actually come about from homeostasis? And I think I mentioned last time that if you look at the philosophical strains of modern scientific thought, you know you have an atomistic thing, which the cybernetic metaphor ties into very closely. But you also have two purposeful, purposeful, driven, purpose, driven, or purposeful philosophies. And of course, that's Plato versus Aristotle. And Aristotle is most relevant here. You know he, he argued that there's some internal, uh, self knowledge of what something is supposed to be. That's that that's a very purposeful kind of a thing, and and everything derives from that purpose. And so when you have a bird where it gets cold and he starts to grow insulating plumage, the bird loaded up with the insulating plumage is the different looking bird from the bird in the summer, but they're still birds. You know, a sparrow is still a sparrow, whether it's cold or not. And, and, and this struck Aristotle as indicating some internal self knowledge of what a sparrow is supposed to be, if you will. And the form of the sparrow might change depending upon conditions. You know, that's the adaptation network. But it's still a sparrow that is. There's still this, this, this core self knowledge of what it is supposed to be. So that's a crucial concept, this notion, what Aristotle called bios, to actually having a full understanding of what homeostasis is. And of course, as I said, you know, this is totally contrary to the whole mechanistic approach to to life. You know, you can you can believe in purposefulness, but you can still acknowledge that the purposefulness operates in a physical and chemical world. There's a chemical and physical basis for this. You know, living things can't violate the laws of thermodynamics. You know, that's just not possible. But nevertheless, you can still have this purposefulness that operates in a in a physical and chemical realm. But what's in charge? Is it the chemical and physics, or is it the actual striving, if you will, of the sparrow, to be a sparrow and to do whatever it takes to modify its environment, both internally and externally, in order to sustain itself as a sparrow. So

Thomas Pals  23:46  
yeah, and our series is on wellness and the fundamentals of wellness. And just to remind our listeners, wellness is that state of being in good health, especially as a consciously pursued goal, encompassing well being, physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, with the aim to optimize overall quality of life. And that's an adaptive process. That is a purposefully adaptive process. And so what you we've been talking about may seem like this esoteric niche construction theory, but it has very real implications for us as human beings and organisms living in the environment, and I'm going to throw it over to you, Ruth for just a moment from The perspective of you've been listening to these two again, talking about the theories and everything from your perspective, is just maybe even hearing about niche construction theory for the first time and listening to what Scott was sharing. What What thoughts, what questions were you wondering about?

Ruth Lorensson  24:59  
Yeah, thanks Tom I think, you know, what I'm hearing is that it's both and, you know, there is, there's something that is inherent in us that will, you know, like the temperature gage, that there's something in our bodies that will adjust, but actually it won't put a coat on, in layman's terms. And so, you know, to what I'm hearing is to to be healthy humans that you know, I guess, embrace our level of well being. We need both. We need to understand that both of these things are at play in our lives. And so I think what I was really struck by is this word wants that Scott mentioned. And I think that that actually Tom and Scott, I think that's such a really important word in wellness. You know, when we think about our lives, like to want to be well, to want to adjust. That's not just a default of I think sometimes, I guess what I'm saying is, a lot of the time, humans can think things are just happening at them, but there is this kind of a that word, again, that word agency. I mean, it's a really cool, loaded word, if we hold, if we grasp, hold a bit that we actually do have agency, as well as this, you know, as well as an internal thing that will just happen because we're, you know, of our bodies, makeup, I guess so. Like, how do like? I guess I want to focus on that. Want that agency. What does that look like? How does what, I guess you know, what stops that? What is there anything that, Scott, you've seen in nature that would stop that? Or is, is innate? Is nature just like? No, they're they want it. They understand it. And how, I guess, like, why, in terms of the human condition, why do we struggle so much with agency and want? I know I'm falling into philosophy here, but I'm throwing it back over to you. You asked me Tom so I'm sharing my questions either of you. Yeah,

Scott Turner  27:14  
you know the as I mentioned this, this whole concept of wanting and striving is is a very problematic one for most modern medicine and also most modern biology and and and and that is a difficult concept to get your head around. The connection to niche construction, or I should say, the connection to niche construction is, where does that agency come in, and at what levels Does the agency come in? And when you talk about the human body, the or any animal body, for that matter, and we can actually extend it to ecosystems, or what have you, is that we are an ecological community, you know, the the or an ecosystem, if you will. And of course, the big thing now is that our ecosystem inside our body is more than just the cells that have descended from the fertilized egg that has given rise to all of us. You know, there's, there's bacteria and microbiomes that live in various surfaces of the body and so forth. So, so we really are an ecosystem, and, and, and each cell within our body exists in a niche, for example, to use that ecological term, and these cells create environments in which they live. So for example, in the body, animal body, one of the fundamental aspects of the organization of cells is for individuals, individual cells to form into these sheet like communities that are called epithelia and and if you look at the organization of the body, all of these epithelia fold up into various kinds of combinations and whatnot that make organs. Now, in each case, you have at, well, I should say, at all levels you have, you have striving agents at work. But the striving may differ from one place one level of organization to another. So when a group of cells organizes into an epithelium. They're really taking the environment and they're dividing it into two. They're dividing it into the environment where the cells live, and they're dividing it into an external environment, if you will. And it doesn't stop there. You know, groups of epithelia can form environments themselves, that that's that each of those things are are organizing to sustain, and I don't want to get too deep into the weeds here, but the agency operates at many different levels, many different scales and Many different levels of organization, and it's all intentional agents creating environments. And they create environments by building an interface between one environment and another. And at the heart of that is that that interface is is the cell has knowledge, or the epithelium has knowledge of what's going on on one side of the boundary, and then it has an internal mechanism to to respond to that change in the external, external environment and and enables. This is where niche construction comes in. It enables the manipulation of that external environment to serve the cells needs. And like I said, it's a little bit of a complicated thing, but the point is, is that these purposeful agents, they operate at many different scales. The cell is the most fundamental one. The epithelium is the next one, all the way up to the organs and organ systems and skin and so forth. And it doesn't stop there. You know, we as organisms can act as agents to modify the environment outside our skins, for example. And excuse me, all of that depends upon having an exchange of information at all these different levels, right? So, so, you know, I, I call these things that, no matter what scale adaptive interfaces, that you have an interface that divides environments. You have an ability to assess what's going on on one side of the environment, outside, in quotes, because a lot of external environments to cells are actually internal to our own bodies. You know, you know that. And then there are mechanisms for manipulating flows of matter and energy to to create new environments, to adapt environments to the physiological needs of the cells. And that's a very, very difficult thing to get your head around right. And there's a, there's a metaphor that that came from the 18th century when physicians were starting to think about this. I think I might have mentioned it in our last conversation, this concept of the many little lives, and that if you if you look at the state of the organism, it's as a result of this endless conversation, interaction, mutual accommodation, if you will, of all the many little lives to one another, the really complicated thing is those Many little lives can be cells. They can be epithelia, they can be organs. They can be all these other kinds of things. And so if you're talking about wellness versus illness, you know the whole Hippocratic idea that that good health is the result of a balance between opposing forces, okay, that's fine, but it's missing this notion that homeostasis actually comes from all these conversations and modifications of environments and so forth that go on and our own feeling of wellness or ill health, that's kind of an epic epiphenomenon of all those conversations going on. You know? You know, if we, if we feel cold, right? We are consciously aware of being cold because, because we're constructing this feeling, if you will, out of all the intentional conversations among the many little lives of of the body. And when we feel ill health, we feel the same thing, right? We feel out of sorts and so forth. And part of that is we want to get better. You know, we don't like feeling badly our when our body is telling us we're feeling badly. We don't want that state anymore, and so we'll try to basically change what's going on. And what that means, really, is that you're when you're of ill health, in ill health, there's something going on with the conversations of the many little lives, right? And you can come in, and we said, you know, we used a metaphor, you can drip oil into the thing with pharmaceuticals, and maybe it will come better, and so forth, and you'll feel better, all right, that's fine, but is that really treating what's going on in the body? And you know, we, we had some conversations about cancer, for example, when, when Tom came up to up to my place here, and we and we went out to a lovely lunch. Thank you, Tom for that. It was terrific, great conversation. And if you look at cancer, for example, it's not that you know that the conversations among the many little lives have changed. It's that you have a group of cells that decide to have their own conversation, and they, you know, to try to manipulate the body to be able to enable them to dominate the conversation. And so when you have a tumor, for example, growing, one of the first things it does is it induces vascularization of the tumor so the body can supply all the nice nutrients and oxygen and whatnot that the tumor needs to grow so, so that's basically just a group of cells that are, that are, have taken it upon themselves to shout louder, right? And a tumor is as purposeful a part of the body as is everything else you know. It wants to grow. It does this. It has the means to be able to dominate the conversation. And so if you want to restore someone to ill health, sorry, I beg your pardon, restore them to good health, then somehow you have to get in there and you have to change that conversation, take it out with a surgically or or treat it with some kind of chemicals so that it's no longer dominating the the conversation and the purposefulness of the tumor actually goes beyond that. You know, I know that there's one school of therapy that says, Well, if we can get the immune system to attack the tumor, then that's the magic bullet that you need to be able to get those tumors to die. But

oddly enough, it's the immune system that it can actually facilitate the the metastasis of a tumor, for example, and so you know, and it's because the conversations have have changed as the result of the presence of that tumor. So that, you know, if you go beyond vascularization of the tumor, for example, tumors can actually enlist the immune system to to actually take colonists, if you will, and send them to other tissues and and you know that that's, that's, that's not something that if we're mechanistically inclined, we're going to wrap our heads around, you know, it's a very radical idea, you know, and, and so, you know when, when you are talking about homeostasis, this Hippocratic idea, that there's this natural balance that's going on there, that if we just restore, we'll be fine. What's really going on is you, is you have all these conversations going on among the agents of the body, and when they are all harmoniously negotiating, come to a nice mutual accommodation, then you have a subjective feeling of wellness. You have a subjective feeling of illness when something has gone wrong with those conversations and and honestly, I don't think we have a good feeling for how we get in there and manipulate those conversations. I can only speak in terms of ecology and whatnot. I can't speak to it in terms of medicine or or wellness, or therapies or those kinds of things. But you know, the the hypothesis is that the key to going from ill health to wellness is to somehow get in and manipulate the conversations that are going on in the ill body, for example, because in the ill body, all the cells are homeostatic, right? They're all manipulating the environment to their own ends. They're constructing environments that are adaptive for them, and the conversations have gotten a little bit out of whack. You know, one group of cells is dominating the conversation where previously it hadn't. And

Thomas Pals  39:12  
if we just extend that into the human and humans as organisms, there is such a hubris and excessive pride and confidence that we haven't in our own minds to manipulate all that. But what we so often do is wind up because we perceive something as beneficial and we pursue it when in reality and impact, it's detrimental. We're functionally cancers in our own environments, and then we're promoting our own demise because we're compromising something that would naturally go toward those many little lives, naturally functioning together, but in our individual humor hubris, or a collective hubris of like minded, this is a great idea, except, no, it's not, don't do that. And I think that to know that that is inherent in our own nature, in down to a cellular level, and just to step away from the hubris of look at how smart we can be, and we can manipulate the machine to we are a part of an organism, and we are an organism within the organisms, and we can pursue wellness, and it's in our very nature to pursue wellness. I just love that that is so hopeful to

Ruth Lorensson  40:46  
me. Yeah, I just want to chip in here, and it just makes me think I'm a leader. Scott, you know, I'm not in any of your spaces at all, but I've spent my, you know, decades facilitating conversations, and you always have that one person or maybe two in the group that dominate and take over the conversation and and, you know, I think part of leadership is to know how to facilitate a conversation and know how to balance the, you know, the room, reading the room kind of, and then making sure you go, you don't shut that that person down. But you kind of are very aware that that person's too loud, or other people aren't necessarily speaking. So it just really, as you were speaking about this kind of conversation, I think it's such a brilliant way of looking at even ill health, you know, in our bodies, because we see it as something we you know, I was listening a friend of mine at the moment is going through a cancer diagnosis and and I think some, some of the way we even think about cancer is like, well, we got to kill it. We've got to get it out. And actually, it is part of us, and it's part of a conversation. But I just wondered, yeah, I think it just made me think of this idea of, actually, is wellness facilitating healthy conversation? And how? How do we facilitate, you know, make sure that there aren't the dominant speakers and then there are, or maybe there's part of us that needs to be have more volume. You know, I'm not sure what what you think about that. Could you

Scott Turner  42:24  
excuse me for a second? My spouse is asking

Thomas Pals  42:28  
a question, which is a great example of how the conversation can change, and we don't. We don't expect it adheres part of the conversation. This

Scott Turner  42:40  
is living, yeah, okay, anyway, yes, object lesson, right there. You know, as you were saying, Ruth, you know the you know that? Well, this is part of the problem. I think with homeostasis, you know, we, we tend to think of illness as a disruption of homeostasis. But this is the funny thing. It's all homeostatic. A tumor is as is, as is, as much driven by homeostasis. It's self knowledge and striving of what the tumor is supposed to be, and it goes all the way up to conscious awareness, you know. You know someone who is dominating the conversation. They're dominating it because it feels good to them, you know. And and we tend to react badly against that, sometimes appropriately, sometimes inappropriately, I think, because it's not making us feel good, you know. And therefore we want to shape the shape the conversation that's going on there. But you know this, This forces us to rethink the whole notion of just what derangement is, you know. Is it a failure of homeostasis, or is it homeostasis operating just as it just as it should be, you know. And I think probably the ultimate kind of abnormal homeostasis, if you will, to me the most compelling metaphor is addiction, you know. And of course, the addictive state, it looks very bad to us, and it usually is, obviously, but to the addicted person, it's the perfectly rational thing to do, you know. It makes them feel good, you know. And, and that's why they that's why they, they strive to do that, and it feels good to them when it's objectively bad, because you've actually changed the conversation within the pleasure reward system of the brain in such a way that that's the normal conversation doesn't exist anymore. And you can explain that in terms of, you know, sensitivity of dopamine receptors and all these other kinds of things, and then drip the oil in to help make it go away. But, but, you know, addiction is very, very persistent, because these conversations have changed. They've changed in a way that that actually is homeostatic to the addict himself or herself, and somehow, to wean someone off of their addiction, you have to change the way that your brain is conversing within itself and and sometimes it works pretty well, and others it doesn't. As you know, in the whole field of addiction, there's a lot of controversy about what actually works and what doesn't, you know? And so, you know, the This, to me, is the most difficult thing about this, you know, and and actually gives me the greatest doubts about about what this whole thing is, you know. How do you get a handle on on what these conversations are? Is it such a general idea that it explains everything and therefore explains nothing, you know, I don't know. I haven't got to that point yet, but, or do we come up with a way that we can rationally talk about the conversations that are going on among the many little lives and therapies and treatments that can actually intervene and change those conversations.

Thomas Pals  46:23  
Yep, and Oh, absolutely. And my experience as a psychotherapist, as a helping professional, as a wellness coach, is to help guide that person into beneficial conversations, whether it's with themselves, with others, with their own bodies, and so that the end result doesn't simply gratify Yeah, and is perceived as wellness, because I like this, and it feels good When that's not actually wellness at all, and we may be detrimentally contributing to our own illness simply because we're pursuing something that makes us feel good.

Scott Turner  47:10  
Addiction is the classic example of that, and

Thomas Pals  47:13  
that is not in harmony with our very natures, I think, and why we well, we

Scott Turner  47:21  
won't persist long if we allow those conversations to dominate. You know, let's put it that way. And you know, ultimately, we're going to feel pretty bad about what we've what our, our our conversations among our men that many little lives have have guided us to. But yeah, it's Well, yeah. And as I say to me, addiction is the classic metaphor for or the classic exemplar of how homeostasis and changing the conversations between all the many little lives can result in ill health. It feels great, but it's still very bad for us.

Thomas Pals  47:59  
Brilliant. So thank you so much, Scott. Thank you for Ruth and your contributions. Let's all pursue beneficial conversations at so many micro and macro levels so that we all thrive. Yeah,

Keywords: homeostasis, niche construction theory, evolutionary biology, adaptation, agency in wellness, interoception, Purpose and Desire, Scott Turner, wellness science, ecosystem health, human resilience, cellular health, adaptation theory, Aristotle biology, Walter Cannon homeostasis