The presentations at Denis Noble’s Oxford 2026 Evolution conference are not just philosophical / academic dithering, but impact health care, technology, disease. Your life.

When your sister-in-law gets diagnosed with breast cancer, her doctors are shooting at gene mutations… while the genome rearranges its entire chessboard.

No wonder resistance appears in months. Understanding actual evolutionary mechanisms means designing treatments that can’t be outsmarted by cellular intelligence.

Henry Heng’s work shows cancer evolves like new species evolve—through massive chromosomal reorganization, not gradual gene tweaks.

Levin’s Xenobots—living robots made from frog cells—rewrote their own “body plan” without any evolutionary history or programming.

Since cells can problem-solve and redesign themselves on the fly, then: (a) we’ve been modeling biology wrong, and (b) we can harness that intelligence for regenerative medicine and soft robotics. Already happening.

Microbiome Medicine: Laura Weyrich’s ancient dental plaque research isn’t archaeology, it’s a map showing which bacteria we lost that kept our ancestors healthy. She’s developing Oral Microbiome Transplants.

* The Agency Revolution:

The old story told us: You’re a meat robot. Your genes are a blueprint. Mutations are random. Cancer is bad luck. Aging is programmed obsolescence.

Sit down, take your pills, hope the randomness tilts in your favor.

Agency-based evolution says: Cells learn. Organisms problem-solve. Genomes edit themselves non-randomly in response to stress.

Bacteria teach each other antibiotic resistance. Your microbiome negotiates with your immune system.

Cancer cells are intelligent adversaries running evolutionary experiments faster than we run clinical trials.

This changes everything.

Because organisms direct their own evolution, interventions can work WITH cellular intelligence instead of against it.

If epigenetic inheritance is real (it is), then what you do today affects your grandchildren’s disease risk—which means prevention becomes rational instead of wishful thinking.

If small RNAs carry heritable stress responses (Oded Rechavi proved it), then trauma isn’t just psychological—it’s biological information your kids inherit. Understanding this means we can interrupt it.

If the genome reorganizes intelligently under crisis (Henry’s genome chaos), we can trigger beneficial reorganization instead of waiting for random mutation roulette.

The gene-centric, materialist story said: “Life is a chemical accident optimized by blind selection. Sit back and let the experts manage your decay.”

The agency perspective says: “Life is intelligent matter that learns, adapts, innovates, and passes that information forward through multiple channels. You’re not a helpless meat puppet. You’re a biological system with leverage points.”

One framework produces helplessness… and hundred-billion-dollar treatment industries that don’t cure anything.

The other produces testable interventions, early detection strategies, microbiome therapeutics, regenerative medicine.

And the radical idea that understanding how life works might help us NOT die from preventable diseases.

Yeah, much of this is still being worked out. But the difference isn’t academic hair-splitting. It’s the difference between warfare and the opportunity to dialogue with your own body.

Join us 7-9 January in Oxford. Note: Onsite participation has reached maximum capacity but the online participation is open and has no limit. https://oxford2025evolutionconference.com/

See you there –
Perry Marshall

10 years ago Denis Noble had a standoff with 23 Royal Society Fellows and it took a minor miracle for his 2016 Evolution conference to take place.

That once conference radically shifted the field. Denis is a physiologist famous for figuring out how the cardiac rhythm works. He knocked out genes to figure out how the heart works and just from that information alone realized the standard evolution model could not possibly be right.

This conference connects people from a dozen other disciplines who are together creating an entirely new model of evolution. This conference brings together people from…

cancer research
evolutionary biology
philosophy of science
artificial intelligence
plant genetics
neuroscience
chemistry
and cognitive psychology….

…Felds that rarely share the same room, much less agree on fundamental questions about how life works.

-Cognition is central, and goes all the way down to the cellular level (and possibly below). Intelligence is everywhere in the organism.

-Biological Relativity: Just as there is no “center of the universe” (because time and space are curved) there is no absolute beginning or end of any process in biology. A heart is NOT like a watch. Nothing in biology perfectly fits the neat labels we put on them. 

The following speakers bring their interdisciplinary insights:

-Michael Levin – the generation of features in embryos requires collective cellular intelligence which navigates the space of anatomical possibilities. It’s nothing like a “computer program.” Xenobots and Anthrobots engineer goal-seeking system with zero historical precedent. Cells learn and problem-solve; evolution operates differently on intelligent matter versus hardwired mechanisms.

-Henry Heng is one of the most brilliant cancer researchers I’ve ever met. He determined from his cancer research alone that the standard evolution story could not possibly be right. His book “Genome Chaos” is a tour de force.

-James Shapiro has been my personal mentor for 15 years. Has consistently been 20-30 years ahead of everyone.

-Eva Jablonka, Extended evolutionary synthesis architect. 

-Addy Pross – one of the most forward-thinking chemists on the scene, discussing Dynamic Kinetic Stability.

-Oded Rechavi – knows more about the c elegans worm than anyone else on the planet. Has studied the instantaneous evolutionary adaptations of these worms (which are nearly everywhere in the world). Adaptations are passed to generations WITHOUT dna changes, sometimes in minutes.

Yet you will find profound agreement and a brilliant synthesis of ideas.

Join me 7-9 January in Oxford. 

Note: Onsite participation has reached maximum capacity but the online participation is open and has no limit.

https://oxford2025evolutionconference.com/

See you there –
Perry Marshall

Exactly 10 years ago, Oxford Professor Denis Noble announced a revolutionary conference at the Royal Society in London, the oldest scientific body in the world. (Where Isaac Newton himself was once president.)

The New Evolution conference was met with cold hostility by other members of the Royal Society. In fact, 23 Fellows of the Royal Society circulated a petition calling for it to be cancelled. They stated that we don’t need “homeopathy” or other “pseudoscientific” theories of evolution.

The truth was, the Good Ol Boys Club of Evolutionary biology did not want their laziness to be exposed.

Evolutionary biology for decades had gotten away with an appalling level of intellectual slop that would never be tolerated in any other profession.

(10 years earlier, I myself as an engineer had been aghast at the paper-thin stories and explanations… and I was even more appalled as I discovered what these people had been hiding. The real science was absolutely magical.)

And Noble, a world-class physiologist, was tired of it.

So…. Denis responded by inviting his critics to present their views and experiments at his own conference. “Bring your evidence and let’s debate it!” He exclaimed.

They did not succeed in cancelling his conference.

And only two of those critics showed up.

I watched their presentations. They were both FAR out of their depth. For years these scientists had successfully bullied and blustered their way past immense questions in science. Suddenly they were backpedaling and mumbling excuses.

They looked like absolute fools.

Well… after that, the ‘old guard’ went silent. The atmosphere in the field shifted sharply. It was clear that the old views were simply not defensible and a far superior body of evidence was in the offing.

Since then, Denis and his colleagues have been robustly vindicated. James Shapiro has become legendary. Michael Levin, who was virtually unknown at that time, has risen to stardom. The field has radically shifted… and the next wave of biology is now upon us.

This new model of evolution has MAJOR implications for cancer treatment and treatment of infectious diseases.

Denis is now organizing a conference at Oxford January 7-9. It is available both streaming on zoom and live-in-person on the Oxford campus.

You can register here.

Note: Onsite participation has reached maximum capacity but the online participation is open and has no limit.

I will attend physically so if you are coming to the conference, I’ll be delighted to meet you in person.

And again, a virtual option is available. Hope to see you there!

Perry Marshall

Jay Cross interviews me about my new paper, The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in the Biological Sciences (co-authored with Sy Garte and Stuart Kauffman.)

Together we explore why “there are no equal signs in biology,” how this revelation redefines medicine as we know it, and the post-computational, post-permission future of healing—with new hope for people facing serious health challenges.

Jay is an accomplished direct response copywriter and researcher with great interest in the “third transition” in science, and this conversation opens that up in a big way.

Podcast here: https://evo2.org/podcasts/there-are-no-equal-signs-in-biology/

Perry describes a series of life changing “thin place” experiences that shifted his reality. This was presented to Adam Safron’s Sapience group followed by a guided meditation and a Q&A at the end.

A further expansion on these ideas is online at perrymarshall.com/ireland.

Link to this podcast here.

Listen to the podcast here!

Sy Garte’s book, Beyond Evolution, is written for the person who is trying to reconcile their deep yearnings for meaning and significance with the longstanding scientific dogma that nature has no purpose. Not only is the tide shifting dramatically inside of secular science, the new discoveries are connecting gaps between the many factions and divisions within the religious world.

Sy Garte
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://sygarte.com/
Substack: https://sygarte.substack.com/

Pre-order Beyond Evolution on Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Evolution-Discoveries-Science-Point/dp/B0DJY6PY7H]

What happens when researchers from competing scientific worldviews sit down for an honest conversation? In this dialogue, three thinkers—exploring Neo-Darwinism, Third Way evolution, and Intelligent Design—discover unexpected common ground while respecting disagreements. Denis Noble (Oxford University, Third Way evolution, www.thethirdwayofevolution.com), Casey Luskin (Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design, www.evolutionnews.org), and Perry Marshall (Evolution 2.0, bridge-builder, www.evo2.org) engage in the kind of scientific discourse that’s increasingly rare: genuine curiosity about opposing viewpoints without the usual academic tribalism.

A Third Way evolutionist who challenges both Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy AND Intelligent Design assumptions

An ID theorist who genuinely appreciates criticisms of mainstream evolutionary theory

Discoveries of shared ground where opponents thought none existed

Honest wrestling with profound questions about consciousness, agency, and the nature of life itself

This isn’t just another evolution debate. It’s a case study in how scientists engage across ideological divides to advance understanding. The most profound insights often emerge not from echo chambers, but from healthy tension between opposing ideas. “We don’t substitute any certainties whatsoever… let it evolve. Let us find out, let us, for God’s sake, be open to what it might be that we discover.” —Denis Noble

Transcript: https://evo2.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Bridging-Evolution-A-Conversation-Between-Intelligent-Design-and-Third-Way-transcript.pdf

Venn Diagram comparing claims of NeoDarwinism (“Neo-D”), Third (“3rd”) Way Evolution, and Intelligent Design (“ID”): https://evolutionnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CaseyLuskinNeo-D-3rdWay-ID-PosterCELS2025V1.pdf

I got a question from an astute reader:

I picked this passage out of a book as an example to help raise a philosophical question about biology and purpose and intent:

There are many connected species that deal with dead animals in a river system. There are species in the water and species on the land. A kangaroo carcass on the river bank is cleaned up by land/air species like crows, flies and ants, while parts of the kangaroo that fall into the river are cleaned up by water species like eels and yabbies to prevent pollution.

-Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

The phrase “to prevent pollution” at the end is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Nowhere on any level that we know of is anyone or anything “intending” to prevent pollution here, by having eels and yabbies do this. The eels and yabbies certainly aren’t thinking “Aha, must prevent river pollution!”

So either
– Nothing and nobody is actually intending anything; the outcome (preventing pollution) just emerges … or perhaps is reinforced by the ecosystem continuing to thrive
or
– Something somewhere actually is intending this, but you and I have no access to it at our level of awareness or consciousness.

Does some entity have to have an “intent” in order for a living system to function like this?

I replied… Read more »

Assembly Theory and the Third Transition in Science

Before I describe Life as No One Knows It, I need to point out that Sara Imari Walker has achieved something extraordinarily difficult. Despite being a highly credentialed scientist with first class collaborators (including Lee Cronin, Paul Davies and her team at ASU), the task she’s undertaken is a scientific and cultural slalom run.

What she’s attempting in this book is almost impossible. But she does it anyway.

-Cultural and Institutional Resistance
Walker challenges a deeply entrenched narrative that “life is just physics and chemistry.” Media and journals endlessly repeat oversimplified origin-of-life theories. The topic is battle-scarred from debates over religion, philosophy, and meaning.

-Intellectual and Disciplinary Complexity
Physics, biology, information theory, and philosophy each have their own assumptions and gatekeepers. She has no safe camp — too philosophical for hard scientists, too scientific for philosophers.

-Scientific Isolation and Risk
There’s no consensus around life as an informational process. She’s building the plane while flying it. Aligning with any faction (like various evolution groups, ID or strong-AI) risks being pigeonholed or dismissed. In science, speculation outside accepted models risks being labeled fringe — yet explaining life without speculation is impossible. Read more »

Andrew Briggs started to write the book Human Flourishing just before COVID and then the world went mad. Since then, the world has gotten even madder and many people are clutching their smartphones, wringing their hands, managing their anxiety, or merely existing. What does it mean to flourish and what do people, relationships, and professions look like and feel like when they flourish. 

In Human Flourishing, authors Andrew Briggs and Michael J. Reiss weave together a beautiful picture of the material and immaterial, the concrete and the spiritual. Another of Andrew’s books, It Keeps Me Seeking, includes in the endpapers a reproduction of Roger Wagner’s painting ‘Writing in the Dust’. The original painting hangs in The Auckland Project Faith Museum: https://aucklandproject.org/attraction/faith-museum/.

Roger and Andrew had previously written together The Penultimate Curiosity, in which they show how science swims in the slipstream of ultimate questions. They made a two-part Documentary Film of the book, which can be streamed for viewing. There is also a Curious Science Quest series of six books for children.

The original painting hangs in The Auckland Project Faith Museum: https://aucklandproject.org/attraction/faith-museum/