What does it mean to be a living, thinking being? As a psychology researcher and educator with a background in biology, I can see that traditional approaches often miss something fundamental about the essence of life and mind. This question is becoming more relevant as artificial intelligence tools continue to advance. While AI can process information with remarkable complexity, intelligence in living systems arises from entirely different principles.
One area where we lack depth is in understanding the biological foundations of development. We often describe genes as if they contain a blueprint for building an organism – but this view falls short of explaining how development unfolds. The complete picture certainly includes genes, but it also encompasses cellular processes, environmental factors, and the activity of the organism as it develops.
Another critical insight is recognizing that, rather than simply reacting to environmental inputs, the organism actively creates meaning through its organization and activity. Students often learn outdated models that fail to capture the dynamic and autonomous nature of living systems. Our minds emerge from these core properties of life, further shaped by the ways that humans engage in the cultural practices we have built. By integrating perspectives from psychology, biology, and neuroscience, we can form a more cohesive understanding of human development that weaves together biological and cultural processes.
In my opinion, there is a need for educational resources that bridge disciplines and help students appreciate the broader context of their studies. We require a perspective that illuminates the continuity between humans and other living beings, while also reflecting on the distinctive aspects of human experience. To contribute to this effort, I developed the resources outlined below – all of which remain works in progress.
About Development
I wrote these documents to help students and other readers understand development from multiple angles - from the big picture of how life cycles have evolved to the details of how individual organisms develop and change. My goal was to explore fundamental questions about what development means by connecting ideas across biology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
Enacting Life
This resource emerged from my interest in what makes living things fundamentally different from non-living things. These materials examine this question through the lens of embodiment, and more specifically an enactivist line of thinking. Psychology students rarely encounter these fundamental ideas about the nature of living things, even though they offer profound insights into cognition, development, and the relation between individual and environment.
Human Brains
These learning materials discuss how humans came to occupy such a distinctive place in life on earth, looking beyond simple biological explanations to examine the complex relationships between development, learning, and culture. The documents explore how human abilities emerged through the interplay between our extended childhood, our capacity to learn from others, and our drive to share and improve knowledge across generations.