Michael Levin

Biophysicist, Biology Professor, Tufts Director

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Dr. Michael Levin, Ph.D. is a professor in the biology department at Tufts University.    He serves as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Devlopmental Biology.   He is one of the leading researchers and thinkers in the world when it comes to understanding biophysical mechanisms, morphogenesis, and the dynamics of life.  

Quotes by Michael Levin

"The idea that cognition just magically shows up at some biological step, and then humans gain a true self... that runs against everything we know about evolution and developmental biology." - Michael Levin

"We've underestimated matter... We've been sold this notion that matter lacks intelligence... We are finding novel proto-cognitive capacities in extremely minimal systems.  And they're surprising and shocking to us.  " - Michael Levin

"Potential energy and least action principles are the tiniest hopes and dreams there are." - Michael Levin

"What's important about bio-electricity is that it functions as a cognitive glue.   We are an enormous collection of individual neurons, and yet those neurons come together to give rise to a new individual that has goals, preferences, and memories that none of the individual neurons have." - Michael Levin

"We have tools where you can see the [electrical blueprint of an organism] - an "electric face".  There's a pattern that tells you where should the eyes go;  how many eyes should there be; where should the mouth be; how many heads should a planarium flat worm have.  These are states of distributed bio-electrical activity that are now visible.  Better than being able to see them, you can change them.  " - Michael Levin

"No individual cell knows what a finger is, or how many fingers you're supposed to have, but the collective absolutely does.   That's how you get to things like a salamander where you can amputate an arm, and a new arm will be rebuilt, and the most amazing thing is they will stop building when they're done.  " - Michael Levin

"A fertilized egg has tens of thousands of cells.  Among those cells you have an ocean of potentiality for the initial forming of individual self-hood.  Certain regions of cells organize and form together to become an embryo, and that embryo group of cells essentially tells the rest of the cells in the egg to back down at that point, generally resulting in a single embryo per fertilized egg.   However, by scratching the cellular surface and temporarily breaking the communication between the thousands of cells with this potential, you will see multiple embryos form instead of just one.  This collective organization of cells and pursuit of goals is the origin of self-hood." - Michael Levin