
Where Biology Goes Off the Rails - Dr. Michael Levin, DemystifySci #369
The DemystifySci Podcast
How Collective Systems Own Associations
Michael asks who owns learned associations in animals and explains that integrated systems, not single cells, hold associative memory.
Michael Levin is a synthetic biologist at Tufts University who believes that asking questions about “life” is a fruitless project. Instead, he argues that we ought to be trying to understand the emergence of cognition - a feature that he believes appears long before cells emerge. As part of this project, Levin has started to pull on a series of threads woven through the origin of life debate that seem to show basic elements of thinking systems - habituation, sensitization, conditioning - can be found in simple physical networks. We dig into how these systems work, what they reveal about life, and how his approach to understanding nature resolves a lot of biological paradoxes.
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00:00 Go!
00:05:11 Exploring the Origins and Definitions of Life
00:11:30 The Complexity of Defining Life
00:14:30 The Limitations of Scientific Categories
00:17:58 Re-evaluating Life and Cognition
00:19:40 Theoretical Perspectives on Life
00:20:08 The Spectrum of Cognition and the Re-enchantment of Nature
00:24:09 Experimental Approaches to Understanding Cognition in Networks
00:30:14 Feedback Loops in Learning and Causal Emergence
00:35:34 The Role of Chemical Interactions in the Origins of Life
00:39:27 Discussion on Learning and Molecular Networks
00:41:35 The Nature of Complexity and Consciousness
00:45:04 Science and the Crisis of Meaning
00:49:34 Expanding Compassion in Understanding Life
00:54:13 Methodology of Chemical Experimentation
00:58:53 Analysis at Different System Levels
01:01:56 Causal Powers of Networks
01:04:31 Collective Intelligence in Biological Systems
#cognition, #bioelectric, #emergent , #complexsystems, #neuroscience, #regenerativemedicine , #origins, #philosophypodcast , #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast
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