Cells are agential materials, not passive substrates for evolution

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• In embryological development, chemistry and cell migrations are mechanisms that do the work but are simply not the principal thing going on — the fifteen properties and their unfolding are.claim0.772
  Alexander's interpretive priority claim distinguishing mechanistic substrate from the morphogenetic principle at work
• Biology's robustness, open-endedness, evolvability, and unique complexity likely depend on the fact that evolution works with an agential material.claim0.769
  Central claim linking life's properties to the inherent competencies of its material substrate.
• There is no privileged material substrate for Selves; cognition can arise in neurons, single cells, plants, tissues, swarms, and engineered systems.claim0.766
  Second foundational pillar of TAME; supports basal cognition and rejects brain-centrism.
• Cells exhibit generalization in physiological space, recognizing novel stressors as members of familiar classes to deploy transcriptional solutions.hypothesis0.757
  Predicts that cells can categorize perturbations and mount appropriate, not just hardwired, responses.
• Living cells and tissues are not really machines; but then again, nothing is really anything – all metaphors are wrong, but some are more useful than others.claim0.756
  Concluding pragmatic epistemology: the machine metaphor's value is heuristic, not ontological
• When a subset of cells is given a morphogenetic goal (e.g., build an eye), they autonomously recruit unmodified neighbors to complete the structure, showing modular competency.claim0.755
  Principle of top-down control.
• The large-scale morphological goals of an organism override and harness the local competencies of individual cells to adaptively navigate morphospace.claim0.755
  Describes top-down control in morphogenesis.
• Major evolutionary transitions—from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to multicellular life—are structure-preserving transformations at the scale of life-organization itself.claim0.753