Basal Cognition
The minimal capacities through which living systems sense conditions, retain information, evaluate alternatives, and act.
A field guide to recurring ideas
Concepts
Plain-language entries for ideas that recur across my experiments and writing—designed to be useful beyond their home disciplines.
Predictive Agency
The ability of a living system to use present information to prepare for likely future conditions.
Population Heterogeneity
Meaningful differences among cells that can broaden, constrain, or reorganize a population’s response to change.
Cellular Memory
A persistent influence of past conditions on a cell’s present state or future response.
Multicellular Transitions
Evolutionary changes through which cells become coordinated parts of a larger reproducing collective.
Adaptive Capacitance
The capacity of a system to store or expose variation that becomes useful when conditions change.