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(416)

218 | Raphael Bousso on Black Holes and the Holographic Universe

218 | Raphael Bousso on Black Holes and the Holographic Universe

Stephen Hawking's discoveries of black hole radiation, entropy, and the information-loss problem have both taught us an enormous amount about the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity, an...

21 Marras 20221h 21min

217 | Margaret Levi on Moral Political Economy

217 | Margaret Levi on Moral Political Economy

Why do people voluntarily hand over authority to a government? Under what conditions should they do so? These questions are both timeless and extremely timely, as modern democratic governments struggl...

14 Marras 20221h 21min

AMA | November 2022

AMA | November 2022

Welcome to the November 2022 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...

7 Marras 20223h

216 | John Allen Paulos on Numbers, Narratives, and Numeracy

216 | John Allen Paulos on Numbers, Narratives, and Numeracy

People have a complicated relationship to mathematics. We all use it in our everyday lives, from calculating a tip at a restaurant to estimating the probability of some future event. But many people f...

31 Loka 20221h 10min

215 | Barry Loewer on Physics, Counterfactuals, and the Macroworld

215 | Barry Loewer on Physics, Counterfactuals, and the Macroworld

The founders of statistical mechanics in the 19th century faced an uphill battle to convince their fellow physicists that the laws of thermodynamics could be derived from the random motions of microsc...

24 Loka 20221h 34min

214 | Antonio Padilla on Large Numbers and the Scope of the Universe

214 | Antonio Padilla on Large Numbers and the Scope of the Universe

It's a big universe we live in, so it comes as no surprise that big numbers are needed to describe it. There are roughly 10^22 stars in the observable universe, and about 10^88 particles altogether. B...

17 Loka 20221h 15min

AMA | October 2022

AMA | October 2022

Welcome to the October 2022 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 Pat...

10 Loka 20223h 1min

213 | Timiebi Aganaba on Law and Governance in Space

213 | Timiebi Aganaba on Law and Governance in Space

With communication satellites, weather satellites, GPS, and much more, what happens in space is already important to our lives here on Earth. And the importance of space is only going to grow as we in...

3 Loka 20221h 16min

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