132 | Michael Levin on Growth, Form, Information, and the Self

132 | Michael Levin on Growth, Form, Information, and the Self

As a semi-outsider, it's fun for me to watch as a new era dawns in biology: one that adds ideas from physics, big data, computer science, and information theory to the usual biological toolkit. One of the big areas of study in this burgeoning field is the relationship between the basic bioinformatic building blocks (genes and proteins) to the macroscopic organism that eventually results. That relationship is not a simple one, as we're discovering. Standard metaphors notwithstanding, an organism is not a machine based on genetic blueprints. I talk with biologist and information scientist Michael Levin about how information and physical constraints come together to make organisms and selves.

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Michael Levin received his Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University. He is currently Distinguished Professor and Vannevar Bush Chair in the Biology department at Tufts University, and serves as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. His work on left-right asymmetric body structures is on Nature's list of 100 Milestones of Developmental Biology of the Century.


Jaksot(418)

AMA | February 2023

AMA | February 2023

Welcome to the February 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

6 Helmi 20233h 7min

225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency

225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency

Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and decide on a course of action based on those delibe...

30 Tammi 20231h 22min

224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth

224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth

So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing and displaying information without putting too mu...

23 Tammi 20231h 16min

223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are

223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are

There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know th...

16 Tammi 20231h 10min

222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World

222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World

Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it's only inspiration, not detailed guidance. S...

9 Tammi 20231h 24min

221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human

221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that ...

2 Tammi 20231h 20min

Holiday Message 2022: Thinking Really Slowly

Holiday Message 2022: Thinking Really Slowly

Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicker and less-well-thought-out solo episode to round off another year. Ironically, this year the theme ...

19 Joulu 202247min

220 | Lara Buchak on Risk and Rationality

220 | Lara Buchak on Risk and Rationality

Life is rich with moments of uncertainty, where we're not exactly sure what's going to happen next. We often find ourselves in situations where we have to choose between different kinds of uncertainty...

12 Joulu 20221h 16min

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