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michael röbbins's avatar

As some Marxist or other pointed out recently, a shepherd in Burkina Faso leaves hardly any ecological footprint, while the CEO of Exxon leaves a global ecological footprint. It's not the number of humans, but what they do that matters—or to be more precise, it's where they fit in the system for which the planet is nothing but a profit engine.

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Jack C.'s avatar

Thank you. Wonderful, as ever. Your discussion of systems biology and mention of Robert Rosen leads me to ask, as I’ve wondered for some time, whether you’re familiar with and what you think of the work of Michael Levin (who’s recently been in several conversations with Iain McGilchrist).

Levin shows that morphogenesis is an intentional process and provides many examples of top-down causation and, of course, yet further compelling evidence against genetic reductionism.

- Caterpillar memories are retained in the butterfly, even though its brain is liquified during metamorphosis.

- A decapitated planarian’s regrown head and brain will retain its memories from before decapitation.

- Planaria can modulate specific genes to quickly adapt to survive in previously fatal environments that it had never encountered in its evolutionary history.

- Organs can develop into the same ‘target’ anatomy despite internal perturbations, even if they have to utilize different molecular mechanisms.

- Limb regeneration can be induced in animals that don’t otherwise regenerate just by changing their bioelectric ion channels.

- Xenobots, and self-reproducing Xenobots

All of it raises the obvious question of ‘where’ these memories and instructions are located that drive morphogenesis, and it looks increasingly like it’s somehow, at least sometimes, in the form of the thing the creature will become.

(One of many presentations can be found on YouTube by searching "Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces".)

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