An interesting paper this month at Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology argues not only that living cells are cognitive (that is, in some sense, they think), but that their thinking is the basis of evolution.

The first part of the claim is not new. In 2021, molecular biologist James Shapiro told his colleagues that “All living cells are cognitive.”

What’s new is that scientists working from this perspective have begun to develop a detailed theory of evolution that squarely challenges Darwin’s natural selection (survival of the fittest). Darwinian natural selection — the theory exclusively taught in schools in many places — states that natural selection, acting on the random mutation of genomes, accounts for the history of life. And this new group thinks that cognition, as present even in the earliest living cells, does so:

The argument is now advanced that the concept of natural selection should also be comprehensively reappraised. Cognitive selection is presented as a more precise term better suited to 21st century biology. Since cognition began with life’s origin, natural selection represents cognitive selection.

Biology in the 21st century: Natural selection is cognitive selection Miller WB Jr, Baluška F, Reber AS, Slijepčević P. Biology in the 21st century: Natural selection is cognitive selection. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2024 Aug;190:170-184. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2024.05.001. Epub 2024 May 11. PMID: 38740143.

They view natural selection as a tautology that explains nothing and predicts nothing. One might add that it adapts well to slogans that can be boomed from the front of a room, silencing dissent. For many years, that seems to have been enough. But then we started to learn more about cells.

How would the authors replace natural selection as a unifying principle in biology?

The authors propose Cognition-Based Evolution (CBE) instead: “cognition is coincident with life’s origin, and what had been termed natural selection should instead be considered cognitive selection.” Yes, they go all the way back to the origin of life, with mats of cells engaged in “cooperative behaviors and collaborative problem-solving”:

No one knows how cognition began. However, there is no reason to doubt that whatever that spark, cognition was epitomized in the cellular form approximately 3.7–3.4 billion years ago and that intelligence has been governing the flow of biological information continuously thereafter.

Miller et al., Cognitive selection

On this theory, meaning and purpose are part of evolution(!)

Darwinian theory holds that evolution is “neither purposeful nor goal-directed” but they argue,

the measured use of information by discriminating cells yields purposeful cellular actions as coordinated biological expressions whose goal is cell-derived niche constructions representing cell-based solutions to environmental stresses. The assertion that the origin of life corresponds with the origin of cognition and sentience (consciousness) has been codified and supported as the Cellular Basis of Consciousness. Simply put, all cells have been conscious/cognitive/sentient agents since life began as Bacteria and Archaea.

Miller et al., Cognitive selection.

Not surprisingly, Miller et al. have little use for the popular view that cells are “living machines”: “CBE begins with the foundation that cognitive cells engage in the self-referential reception, assessment, communication, and deployment of information. Accordingly, cells are competent, problem-solving, intelligent agents that make contingent self-referential decisions completely unlike all programmed machines.” Cells engineer their environments.

Is this a form of panpsychism?

Miller et al. quote science writer Philip Ball,: “For what truly distinguishes living organisms as self-organized knots of energy and matter, spinning in the universe, is that they acquire meaning and purpose. Those can often seem like taboo words to many biologists because they convey teleological and even theological connotations. But this is not merely a mistake; it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what life is, of why we are not “nothing but atoms.” Not only can meaning and purpose be scientific concepts, but they need to become that if we are to get to the core of what life is.”

Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBE) is clearly a form of panpsychism — but with a twist. Miller et al. don’t say cells are “conscious,” but rather that they are cognitive: That is, cells use, and always did use, information to engage in purposeful behavior, much as a magpie or a frog would. “Cognitive” is a more helpful term for scientists because arguments around the concept of consciousness in the human sense need not apply to merely purposeful behavior, which can be observed and discussed externally.

Note how far we are from the world of Darwin’s followers now, while still staying with the evidence. One of Darwinism’s bigger promises was that it might even explain away human consciousness, never mind account for cellular cognition. That was the life project of philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942–2024) but interest seems to be fading.

But now, how did meaning, purpose, and cognition get started?

Panpsychism concedes the actual existence of meaning and purpose, and perhaps even of consciousness in the universe. Most forms of panpsychism in science seek to locate it within the natural order. In that case, origin of life is one place where the wheels come off. But then Darwinism doesn’t have any credible account of the origin of life to counter it with either. So we might expect panpsychism to grow more popular as an interpretive approach to biology, now that journals will permit it.