'生物能動性(biological agency)'這一概念是否具有科學意義?

Does the idea of ‘biological agency’ serve a scientific purpose? - 3QD

# Does the idea of ‘biological agency’ serve a scientific purpose?

Posted on Monday, Jul 13, 2026 1:45PM by S. Abbas Raza
Philip Ball at Quanta:

In 1993, a team led by the planetary scientist Carl Sagan tentatively concluded that there is life on Earth. Not much of a deduction, you might think — except that the researchers confined their evidence to observations made by the Galileo spacecraft(opens a new tab), which had flown past our planet three years earlier on a looping journey to Jupiter. So great is the transformative power of life that its presence can be detected just from the light and radio waves our planet emits or reflects into space. Today we scan the cosmos for some of these telltale signatures light-years away.

Life leaves a mark, yet even now there’s no scientific consensus about what makes living things so different from inorganic substances like the rocks, gases, and oceans that are the sole components of dead worlds. Many scientists cite properties such as replication or metabolism. Others speak in more abstract terms about the way life is out of thermodynamic equilibrium with its surroundings. But some give another kind of answer. Living organisms are different because they do stuff for reasons.

3QD的一篇新聞, 很短, 開頭的問題確實值得深究, 不過我首先,biological agency 這個詞目前實際上并沒有統一定義(至少我沒查到), 但我想需要先理清 agency 和 reasons 上, 不然後面很快會變成沒有意義的文字游戲…, 先看看這一段作者引用Sonia Sultan[^1][^2]的定義, 生物通過自調節自身結構與活動, 以維持自身存在的功能與能力. 我認爲這裏實際上根本沒有自由意志的含義. 我想目前有幾種對生物能動性的幾種理解理出來(實際上聽著很像我們常説的”個體能動性”,但考慮到對象可能根本不是一回事). 我們爲什麽會説: 鳥築巢是爲了繁殖, 而不會説石頭下山是爲了下山? 可能有人會覺得這是什麽蠢問題,“因爲鳥有生命! 這是顯而易見的”, 但爲什麽有 生命 會讓我們認爲某些物理過程具有目的性? 再模糊一下物體與生命的差異, 比如細菌: 感知葡萄糖濃度; 改變鞭毛運動; 游向營養豐富區域. 那麽現在呢? 我想知道, 生命究竟是增加了什麽, 使得人們認爲物理行爲自動獲得了 目的性, 這種目標是真實存在的嗎? 還是只是人們單純爲了方便描述方便. 誰知道這個問題討論了多久. 如果把人類尺度上的 organism acts for reasons 套用到其他生物上, 那麽 reasons 到底是什麽, 神經元放電?基因表達?信息處理?還是主觀意向, 如果沒有答案, 我覺得最後很快會縮成生物就是會自己活動, 如果 agency 能完全翻譯成 adaptive behavior,feedback regulation,behavioral plasticity,那我們爲什麽不用這些已經被定義清楚的術語?爲什麽還要引入一個容易聯想到自由意志,目的論的單詞? 我想 intentional agency 和本文討論的 biological agency 差異不僅僅是是否是生命在進行物理運動

[^1]: Sonia E. Sultan 索尼娅·E·苏尔坦（英語：Sonia E. Sultan，1958年—）是美國植物演化生態學家、衛斯理安大學（Wesleyan University）生物學及環境研究教授（現任Alan M. Dachs科學講座教授）。她以對表型塑料性（Phenotypic plasticity）、生態發育生物學（Eco-devo）以及生態位建構（Niche construction）的研究而聞名，是擴展綜合演化理論（Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, EES）的主要推動者之一。 [^2]: biological agency is the capacity of a living system to participate in its own persistence, maintenance, and function by regulating its own structures and activities in response to the conditions it encounters.