Hey there — didn’t manage to get my research synthesised for yesterday, but here we are again. That’s why I’ll be writing another post tomorrow, one about Collective Intelligence today and a separate post about the differences of Genes and Cells coming tomorrow.
Update incoming; clearly understood daily posts is way too ambitious as most of this stuff is super complex to truly understand. What I’ll aim to do is post 2 per week and then delve deeper and write longer. This will give me more time to synthesise all the research, understand it and translate it into layman’s terms in my posts.
The paper I’ve chosen to dig into today is “Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates” published by Patrick McMillen & Michael Levin in 2024. The concept of today is “Collective Intelligence” and “Emergence”.
Let’s get cracking.
What is Collective Intelligence in Biology?
When we think of ourselves we think of a “self”. When we look at another human we say that’s a separate being from my-self. However, as you dig deeper you realise that there is not one of anything. All of us, or all living organisms, are made up of a collective of cells. You might think of animal swarms or colonies (think ants or birds), but it’s much more complex than so.
To think of it simply, you got molecules which are like tiny players, cells as small teams, larger teams as organs and the entire body or organism as one large team/organisation. Biological systems are not just structurally nested (like Russian Dolls), but functionally nested too. Each level of organisation can solve problems in it’s own specific domain. If you visualise this, our bodies are not structured just vertically and statically — it’s rather that each level moves horizontally and dynamically, solving their own problems in that particular space.
Problem-Solving at Every Level:
Cells figure out how to get energy, grow and rid itself of waste
Tissues are solving structural problems
Organs work out how to their special jobs (the heart pumping blood, kidneys filtering out waste)
Our bodies or bodies of organisms can solve behavioural problems such as how to move, learn, communicate in three dimensional space
Emergence of Collective Behaviour
The fascinating part is how these different levels work together. The behaviour and problem-solving abilities of “lower levels” such as cells contribute to the emergence of new, more complex abilities at higher levels such as organs or whole organisms. That’s what we call Collective Intelligence — the ability of a group to solve problems that individual members couldn’t solve alone.
I don’t know about you, but this perspective change is hella crazy and makes you look at things differently. For example, the development of an embryo — early stage of multicellular organisms (alien looking things) or the regeneration of a damaged organ can be viewed as collective problem-solving by cells. The cells work together, communicating, and coordinating their actions, to achieve a specific anatomical outcome — an end state/an end goal. As you can image, once that’s start going haywire over time you’re left with all sorts of diseases that we have complicated names for.
Cells are Flexible and Adaptable
This collective behaviour allows for a greater flexibility and adaptability. Just as a flock of birds can navigate around obstacles more effectively than a single bird, a group of cells can find alternative ways to achieve their collective goal when faced with challenges. The way I like to think of this is that groups of cells have Swiss army knife capabilities, throw it any problem and it will find a way to solve for that problem to reach it’s target state. The ability to reach the same goal through different means is a key aspect to biological intelligence.
Applications in Medicine and Technology
Regenerative Medicine: If we could understand collective cellular behaviour we might just be able to crack tissue engineering and organ regeneration. For example, we might be able to guide cellular collectives to rebuild damaged organs or create new ones.
Cancer Treatment: If we view tumors as misguided or malfunctioned cellular collectives we might be able to treat it by redirecting cell behaviour (through bioelectricity) rather than just killing off a bunch of cells.
Synthetic Biology: We could design new biological systems with collective problem-solving abilities. Think of biosensors or living materials that could adapt to their environment.
Drug Development: Understanding how cellular collectives respond to stimuli could lead to way more effective drug screening processes and personalised medicine approaches.
Emergence Permeates Throughout the Universe
Once I started understanding this I started connecting it to another concept that I learnt a few years back. “Emergence is 'when a complex entity has properties or behaviours that its parts do not have on their own, they only emerge when they interact in a wider whole.” It’s as if when you combine simple parts it creates a more complex whole. A friend of mine once put this in a good way; “you have 10 simple things. It’s still a stupid thing and it doesn’t do much. But then you add one more to the mix, and that 11th becomes life.” You see it everywhere — our collective cells and how they become an intelligent organism, a collection of ants that become an ant colony that we marvel at, a collective of humans which becomes an interconnected society with culture, movement, technological advancements.
We see it in our universe. How a solar system moves to a local group, to a galaxy (a collection of stars, planets, asteroids, debris), to larger cosmic structures which looks like this interconnected web of light — or probably something that we don’t understand yet. But I think a lot of secrets to everything lies somewhere in this.
That’s it from me this time around. Have a great weekend, next post tomorrow and then I’ll catch you next week. For those actually reading this — thank you,
Lush