Changing Everything You Know About Biology

 

The groundbreaking work of Michael Levin, a scientist at Tufts University, and his research could radically change how we understand biology, development, and even intelligence itself. Levin found in his compelling study that our cells use higher-level systems to talk to each other and organize what they do. One of those higher-level systems is bioelectricity — a kind of electrical communication that happens not just in neurons (brain cells), but in all cells. These electrical patterns help cells figure out where they are in the body and what they should become.

Traditionally, scientists have believed that genes, the information stored in our DNA, are the main drivers of this process. Genes control how cells behave, what kind of cells they become, and how organs form. Since sequencing the human genome, most biological research has focused on figuring out how genes do all this.

Levin, however, argues that genes are not the full story. He compares genes to low-level computer code. In computer science, programmers don’t usually work with machine code directly—they use higher-level tools that make things easier to understand and control.

The broader implication of Levin’s work is that we may need to rethink our assumptions about what counts as an “agent” and what systems are capable of “goals.” Is a cell an agent? What about a tissue, an organ, or a network of immune cells? Levin suggests that intelligent, goal-directed behavior predates brains—it appears in morphogenesis, in bacterial swarms, even in gene networks.

These systems don’t look like the agents we’re used to, but they exhibit behaviors we associate with intelligence: memory, problem-solving, adaptation. And crucially, Levin isn’t just making this case philosophically; he and his colleagues are demonstrating it experimentally.

By redefining intelligence and cognition in these more general terms, Levin opens the door to new scientific and engineering paradigms. If cells have goals, we can learn to speak their language and steer them toward outcomes we want.

If intelligence arises from cooperation among many simple parts, then the brain is just one example of a much broader class of cognitive systems. That shift could unify fields that have long remained separate: neuroscience, immunology, developmental biology, synthetic bioengineering, even sociology.

This way of thinking reframes cognitive science itself. If cognition is not limited to brains but is a property of coordinated systems, then any system of cooperating agents, cells, tissues, organisms, or even human societies can be studied with the same tools.

Researchers have already found parallels: cancer as a kind of cellular dissociative disorder, or ant colonies falling for visual illusions in the same way individual animals do.

Levin argues that all intelligence is collective intelligence. Every complex behavior we observe emerges from the interactions of simpler units, each with its own limited competencies and goals. That includes us.

What we think of as a single “self” is, biologically, a federation of trillions of semi-autonomous cells negotiating and cooperating toward loosely shared outcomes.

It’s a radical but increasingly unavoidable perspective. Just as societies are built from individual humans, your body is built from individual cells. And just as human societies have emergent properties, like language, law, and culture, so do the cellular societies inside us. The similarity isn’t just poetic; it might be the key to understanding both biology and intelligence in a far more unified and powerful way.

by Vickie Verma @X on June 2, 2025