TLDR: life is software that builds its hardware

This week I learned about Michael Levin who is a prolific Tufts University Biology professor (99 percentile in citations). He's not a metaphysical quack despite what the following implies:

For years, he's had this radical idea about life and consciousness being emergent properties of "Platonic Space" or the realm of mathematics and natural laws. He says existing science is too 'materialist' in that they view physical material as the original cause that results in complexity we see such as life or goal-directed behavior. However, in his and others experiments have shown even highly simplistic nonliving things like the sorting algorithm display 'conscious' properties including working towards a goal.

I found his lens fascinating. I can't tell if it's just using different terminology to describe the same stuff or if it really represents a possible paradigm shift in biological science and other fields.

For example, if consciousness is emergent from platonic space then we should be able to communicate via electrical patterns. The chemical ion gates reorient causing the biological development (morphogenesis) to follow the signal - not the other way around. Thus the "goal" (eg regenerating a limb) is collectively held by all the cells inside a so-called 'cognitive light cone'. Morphogenesis is not caused purely by the genes, nor by any individual cell; it exists in the bioelectric field acting as the blueprint. These patterns are effectively a medium by which we can theoretically -and experimentally- instruct biology to follow.

The applications are most directly in cancer, where Dr. Levin has shown ability to "turn off" a cancer with electricity, as well as other fun experiments like causing two heads to grow on one tadpole body or sprout an eye in the gut that still works! Simple organisms, but if we could scale up to humans it would be very impactful. For example, last week on a video call he mused that you could set up a system to effectively have a 'conversation' with your kidney, and find out exactly what it was telling you, instead of relying on unclear feelings or limited medical indicators. Or creating living internal robots built with your own cells!

I'm no biologist, so curious to hear if any of you know anything about this guy. My computational biologist friend says he's legit but definitely out there. The implications make me think of Chi or Dao or Acupuncture (which Levin also says might be indirectly related). Even if this puzzle is not cracked in the near term, it's always refreshing to hear of a possible breakthrough that can upend our status quo understanding of life and the universe.