Letters of Support from Agential Biology Institute Scientific Advisory Board
Karl J. Friston
To whom it may concern
September 9, 2026
Dear Charlie,
I am delighted to accept the invitation to join the Scientific Advisory Board of the Agential Biology Institute, and I write to say why.
My introduction to this group came through the Agential Topics series, where I had the pleasure of presenting earlier this year. What struck me then, and in every conversation since, was the calibre of the people you have managed to gather. The discussions were unusually good: genuinely interdisciplinary without being vague—and conducted with a level of rigour and curiosity that is uncommon in gatherings of this kind. Assembling such a community is difficult and largely thankless work, and you have done it remarkably well.
That community is the strongest reason for my confidence in the Institute. The question of biological agency attracts a great deal of loose talk. It is rare to find people willing to ask what would actually count as evidence one way or the other, and rarer still to find them doing the hard work of designing tests capable of settling the matter. Many of us hold theoretical commitments about what organisms are doing when they behave as if they have purposes. Rather fewer have built an empirical programme that puts those commitments at risk. That the Institute has made experimental design central from the outset, rather than an afterthought to theory, is what persuades me it can make a genuine contribution.
I should add that I do not expect to agree with everything the Institute proposes, and I regard this as a feature rather than a problem. An advisory board that agrees with the directors about everything is of no use to anyone, and I have found Charlie, Richard, Joana, and Anthony are entirely willing to be argued with, which is the more important quality.
In relation to the leadership, I have every confidence. Charlie Munford brings philosophical range and an unusual capacity to convene people who would not otherwise be in the same room. Richard Watson's formal work is among the most rigorous in this area and having him as Chief Scientific Officer means the theoretical claims will be held to a proper standard. Anthony Finbow supplies the institutional and operational judgement, without which even excellent science tends not to survive contact with the world. Alongside living giants in the field—such as Denis Noble, Michael Levin, and Stuart Kauffman—this is a group with the international standing and seriousness to move the field forward.
I look forward to contributing, and to helping this project succeed.
With warmest regards,
Karl J. Friston, MBBS, MA, MRCPsych, MAE, FMedSci, FRBS, FRS
Professor: Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London
Honorary Consultant: The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
Michael Levin
1/4/26
Distinguished Professor Michael Levin
Allen Discovery Center
Tufts University
200 Boston Ave., room xxx
Medford, MA 02155-4243
Tel. (617) xxx-xxxx
email: xxxx@tufts.edu
To Whom It May Concern,
I am very pleased to offer my strongest support for the formation of the Agential Biology Institute, a new nonprofit founded by my colleague and co-author Richard Watson (University of Southampton) together with Charlie Munford (Agential Topics). Dr. Watson is an exceptionally rigorous, unique, and original thinker whose scholarship bridges evolutionary theory, computation, and the dynamics of adaptation in ways that open genuinely new research directions; he combines strong technical depth with a rare ability to frame testable questions that connect across disciplines. Mr. Munford brings entrepreneurial drive, intellectual seriousness, and practical convening capacity, with a demonstrated record of building communities that translate big ideas into productive working conversations and actionable research agendas. The Institute’s focus on the evolutionary and physiological mechanisms of embodied cognition is both timely and important: biology increasingly demands frameworks that treat living systems as agents—competent, goal-directed, and historically shaped—rather than as passive machines. Creating a durable home for conferences, working meetings, and collaborative research in this area will strengthen the field by accelerating synthesis across developmental biology, physiology, evolution, and cognitive science, and I believe Agential Biology Institute is well-positioned to make meaningful contributions.
Sincerely,
Michael Levin
Vannevar Bush Chair
Tufts University, and
Wyss Institute, Harvard
Denis Noble
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, and Balliol College
Oxford University
OX1 3BJ, UK
February 9, 2026
To whom it may concern,
I am pleased to offer my strong support for the establishment of the nonprofit Agential Biology Institute (ABI). ABI’s mission is complementary to the aims of the Third Way of Biology community and to the broader orientation sometimes described as biological relativism: the recognition that causation in living systems is distributed across multiple levels of organization, with no single privileged “master level.”
ABI is being founded at an opportune moment. Biology increasingly confronts phenomena—robust physiological regulation, developmental plasticity, regeneration, adaptive behavior, and multi-scale coordination—that cannot be adequately understood through one-way, gene-centric narratives or by treating organisms as passive readouts of molecular instructions. ABI’s emphasis on biological agency and multi-level, relational explanation is therefore a necessary corrective, closely aligned with the Third Way’s insistence on taking organismal and physiological processes seriously.
I am particularly encouraged by the calibre and complementarity of the organizing team. I have come to know Charlie Munford through his energetic organization of the Agential Topics Group and through his participation in my NOBLE group of younger researchers; he brings unusual intellectual range and a rare ability to convene sustained cross-disciplinary work. Richard Watson (University of Southampton), known to me through his work on natural induction, brings the kind of rigorous theory-building needed to formalize agency and multi-scale organization without lapsing into metaphor. Joana Xavier, known to me through her origins-of-life research, her role as a judge for the Evolution 2.0 Prize with which I have been involved, and her leadership in founding the OOLEN group of young origins researchers, adds foundational expertise and demonstrated capacity to build serious research networks. Together, they combine community-building, formal machinery, and origins-level grounding in a way the field rarely achieves.
ABI’s focus is not merely philosophical; it has direct consequences for medicine, public health, and technology. When we misconstrue causation in living systems—reducing adaptive physiology to a single level—we risk interventions that are brittle, overly narrow, and poorly personalized. A mature, multi-level science of agency and causation can help move from generic appeals to “complexity” toward operational conceptual, mathematical, and experimental frameworks that clarify which levels matter, how they interact, and how regulation and context shape outcomes.
For these reasons, I strongly endorse ABI’s formation and encourage funders, collaborators, and academic partners to support it as a timely and serious institutional vehicle for advancing scientifically adequate and socially meaningful biology.
Sincerely,
Denis Noble, CBE, FRS
Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology
University of Oxford
Co-founder, Third Way of Evolution
Stuart Kauffman and Katherine Kauffman
January 8, 2026
To Whom It May Concern,
We are pleased to offer our strong support for the Agential Biology Institute (ABI), a new nonprofit founded by Charlie Munford and his colleague Richard Watson of the University of Southampton. Charlie is host of the Agential Topics, a working group frequented by cutting edge scientists, philosophers, and intellectual leaders engaged as both members and guest speakers. Dr. Watson is a rigorous and imaginative scholar whose work in evolutionary theory and complex adaptive systems brings unusual conceptual clarity and technical depth to questions about how novelty, learning, and agency arise in living systems. As members, we find the synergy ignited within this group to be compatible with the very best from both established and theoretical biology (my domain) and biophysical emotion theory (the domain of my wife). Mr. Munford combines intellectual rigor with the practical capacity to convene and sustain high quality interdisciplinary collaboration; through Agential Topics he has demonstrated a rare talent for turning wide-ranging inquiry into disciplined, productive dialogue and durable research momentum. Establishing the ABI seems the next logical step for broader collaborative inquiry and deeper impact. ABI’s mission—advancing conferences, working meetings, and research on the evolutionary and physiological mechanics of embodied cognition—addresses a foundational gap in contemporary biology: the need for integrative frameworks that treat organisms as agents embedded in and cocreating their environments, rather than as passive products of linear causation. We believe ABI’s approach is both scientifically valid and strategically important, and that Munford and Watson have the capability, judgment, persistence and charisma required to build an institution that catalyzes meaningful progress in this emerging field. Our endorsement is actively instantiated by our commitment to serve as board members.
Sincerely,
Stuart A. Kauffman, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry, University of Pennsylvania; Institute for Systems Biology; Marshall Scholar; MacArthur Fellow;
Katherine Peil Kauffman, Director, EFS International; Affiliate: Harvard Divinity School; Northeastern University
Perry MarshalL
Perry Marshall
Evolution 2.0
805 Lake Street #295
Oak Park IL 60301 USA
To Whom It May Concern,
I write in enthusiastic support of the Agential Biology Institute, founded by Charles Munford and Dr. Richard Watson. As an entrepreneur bridging business strategy and cancer research, and as a board member invested in this initiative, I've experienced the potential of their work.
The prevailing reductionist paradigm in biology has extracted an enormous cost. Not merely in delayed scientific progress, but in human suffering. I've worked for six years with oncologists and researchers who battle a disease that consistently outmaneuvers our models. Cancer cells demonstrate agency, adaptability, and memory that cannot be explained by restricting biology to mere chemistry and physics.
When frameworks treat living systems as passive machines, we blind ourselves to the very mechanisms we most need to understand.
The vocabulary of mainstream biology reveals this failure: “Junk DNA," "frozen accidents," "evolutionary leftovers," "degenerate code." This is the language of a profession that has systematically denigrated the sophistication of the very things it purports to study. These terms aren't just imprecise. They betray a fundamental misapprehension of how life works.
Agential Biology Institute brings a necessary correction. By treating organisms as agents, competent, goal-directed, historically shaped, embedded in environments they actively co-create… ABI opens research pathways that reductionism has closed off.
Charlie Munford has built something special in Agential Topics, an online community where rigorous experimentation meets intellectual courage. Dr. Watson brings the technical depth and conceptual clarity essential for translating bold ideas into testable hypotheses. They've created a space where scientists, philosophers, and practitioners can pursue questions about agency, memory, cognition, and adaptation, without apology. Without the artificial constraints of outdated frameworks.
The implications extend far beyond academic biology. Agency alters the way we practice immunology, drug development, environmental science, even economics. When we acknowledge that living systems possess their own goals, learning capabilities and adaptive strategies, we gain access to interventions that reductionism cannot see.
The Agential Biology Institute is sharpening our senses, bringing the full majesty of life back into the life sciences. Not by surrendering rigor, but by expanding it to match the real world complexity and agency we observe in every living system. "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."
This project is both scientifically necessary and hopeful for humanity. I am honored to serve on the board and offer my strongest support for this venture.
Sincerely,
Perry Marshall
Board Member, Agential Biology Institute
Co-Founder, AACR Cancer & Evolution Working Group
Author, Evolution 2.0