I first heard of, and from, Michael Levin at the 2020 ALIFE Conference, where he delivered a keynote that I posted my notes from here.

I’ve been thinking about that keynote on and off for years. While building little life simulations, or working on my snails, or attending mini-conferences on worm locomotion.

When I had to present a paper of my choice for an entry-level life sciences course I took for fun, I decided it was a good time to dig more into Levin’s work. I posted a runthrough of my presentation here. Michael Levin even kindly responded to my late-night email request for feedback, which was so cool and appreciated.

Later, for a different course (‘Good and Bad Science’) that I took for fun, I once again thought about this work. In fact, deciding what I think about it was a big reason for me wanting to take the course in the first place. From occasional checkin reading, I got the nagging thought that Levin may have begun moving away from something deeply rooted in testable science and into more metaphysical, over-reaching, or untestable subjects (although he himself iterates the importance of testing these theories). And as a layperson, I didn’t know what to believe.

Was he doing something totally revolutionary and totally credible here? Something that will change the way we think about Self and mind and consciousness? Or was he starting to drift from his original reputable work into areas well outside of his usable expertise? Was he going to follow what’s been referred to as the typical ‘podcast bro’ trajectory like some other popular figures when they began gaining a wider audience (though in this case sans-podcast) - starting out talking about things he’s a genuine expert in and later devolving into platforming pseudoscientific claims fear-mongering sunscreen? (IYKYK…)

And how was I supposed to know if that line would (or has already been) crossed?

My final written assignment, Testability of the Claim That Cognitive Science Can Be Effectively Applied to Embodied Non-Neural Systems, was written not about Levin’s work specifically, but with it in mind.

Today I read a very interesting new profile of Michael Levin that I thought did a good job covering both the extremely fascinating practical experiments and findings coming out of his lab and the skepticism he faces.

I so want to believe these things. I can’t wait to get that Ingressing Minds preprint onto my tablet and start reading tomorrow. The topic fascinates me, and the way Levin describes it makes it all the more fascinating (even though his papers are, for me, often a challenge to understand). But I think knowing that I want to believe only makes me even more skeptical, because I know it would be so easy to just buy it.

In the end, after seeing his keynote live in 2020, after reading and presenting an assignment on some of his papers, and after trying to understand whether this is starting to delve into the realm of overreach at best or quackery at worst (he’s starting to talk about treating cancer by re-establishing communication between different cells to have them reform into a cohesive view of ‘Self’, if I understand correctly), I just have to admit that I still don’t know.

But I love that I get to follow along and eventually find out!