Slime Mould and Philosophy

Physarum polycephalum, also known more colloquially as 'the blob', 'acellular slime mould', or just 'slime mould', is a unicellular multinucleate protist that has continued to attract the interest of biologists over the past century because of its complex life cycle, unique physiology, morphology, and behaviour. More recently, attention has shifted to Physarum as a model organism for investigating putative cognitive capacities such as decision making, learning, and memory in organisms without nervous systems. The aim of this Element is to illustrate how Physarum can be used as a valuable tool for approaching various topics in the philosophy of biology. Physarum and its behaviour not only pose a challenge to some of the received views of biological processes but also, I shall argue, provide an opportunity to clarify and appropriately sharpen the concepts underlying such received views.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Unknown venue

• Publication date

  2024-12-10

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1017/9781009488648
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• :Inclusive Fitness and Kin Selection

  2025cited by this paper
• Cultural Selection

  2024cited by this paper
• Animal Models of Human Disease

  2024cited by this paper
• Structure and Function

  2023cited by this paper
• Where memory resides: Is there a rivalry between molecular and synaptic models of memory?

  2023cited by this paper
• Thoughts from the forest floor: a review of cognition in the slime mould Physarum polycephalum

  2023cited by this paper
• Biological Individuality

  2023cited by this paper
• Units of Selection

  2023cited by this paper
• The Principle of Dynamic Holism: Guiding Methodology for Investigating Cognition in Nonneuronal Organisms

  2023cited by this paper
• Studying Habituation in Stentor coeruleus.

  2023cited by this paper
• A novel nematode species from the Siberian permafrost shares adaptive mechanisms for cryptobiotic survival with C. elegans dauer larva

  2023cited by this paper
• OUP accepted manuscript

  2022cited by this paper
• The molecular memory code and synaptic plasticity: A synthesis

  2022cited by this paper
• What Counts as a Memory? Definitions, Hypotheses, and “Kinding in Progress”

  2022cited by this paper
• Reframing cognition: getting down to biological basics

  2021cited by this paper
• Learning in single cell organisms.

  2021cited by this paper
• Gene regulatory networks exhibit several kinds of memory: quantification of memory in biological and random transcriptional networks

  2021cited by this paper
• Philosophy in Science: Can Philosophers of Science Permeate through Science and Produce Scientific Knowledge?

  2021cited by this paper
• Unknotting reciprocal causation between organism and environment

  2021cited by this paper
• Hylomorphism

  2021cited by this paper
• Externalized memory in slime mould and the extended (non-neuronal) mind

  2021cited by this paper
• Complex population dynamics in a spatial microbial ecosystem with Physarum polycephalum

  2021cited by this paper
• New insights into survival strategies of tardigrades.

  2020cited by this paper
• Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences

  2020cited by this paper
• Biological identity

  2020cited by this paper
• Inheritance Systems and the Extended Synthesis

  2020cited by this paper
• Stress signalling in acellular slime moulds and its detection by conspecifics

  2020cited by this paper
• The Biology of Reproduction

  2019cited by this paper
• The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life

  2019cited by this paper
• Evidence of conditioned behavior in amoebae

  2019cited by this paper
• Can't see the colony for the bees: behavioural perspectives of biological individuality

  2019cited by this paper
• The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition

  2019cited by this paper
• Morphological stasis in the first myxomycete from the Mesozoic, and the likely role of cryptobiosis

  2019cited by this paper
• Cross-kingdom interactions between slime molds and arthropods: a spore dispersal mutualism hypothesis.

  2019cited by this paper
• Substrate composition directs slime molds behavior

  2019cited by this paper
• A Complex Hierarchy of Avoidance Behaviors in a Single-Cell Eukaryote.

  2019cited by this paper
• Current understanding of the human microbiome

  2018cited by this paper
• Hänsel, Gretel and the slime mould—how an external spatial memory aids navigation in complex environments

  2017cited by this paper
• Learned response sequences in cerebellar Purkinje cells

  2017cited by this paper
• Trophallaxis.

  2017cited by this paper
• Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives

  2017cited by this paper
• Direct transfer of learned behaviour via cell fusion in non-neural organisms

  2016cited by this paper
• Organisms or biological individuals? Combining physiological and evolutionary individuality

  2016cited by this paper
• Immunological memory: lessons from the past and a look to the future

  2016cited by this paper
• Top-down models in biology: explanation and control of complex living systems above the molecular level

  2016cited by this paper
• Evaluating 'Plasticity-First' Evolution in Nature: Key Criteria and Empirical Approaches.

  2016cited by this paper
• On Having No Head: Cognition throughout Biological Systems

  2016cited by this paper
• Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process

  2016cited by this paper
• Organism and Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaptation

  2015cited by this paper
• Rethinking evolutionary individuality

  2015cited by this paper
• Endosymbiotic theories for eukaryote origin

  2015cited by this paper
• Phenotypic variability in unicellular organisms: from calcium signalling to social behaviour

  2015cited by this paper
• Myxomycete plasmodial biology : a review

  2015cited by this paper
• Mechanisms of epigenetic memory.

  2014cited by this paper
• Divining the Essence of Symbiosis: Insights from the Squid-Vibrio Model

  2014cited by this paper
• THE NICHE CONSTRUCTION PERSPECTIVE: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

  2014cited by this paper
• Cellular and molecular mechanisms of negligible senescence: insight from the sea urchin

  2014cited by this paper
• Epigenetic regulation in pluripotent stem cells: a key to breaking the epigenetic barrier

  2013cited by this paper
• Amoeboid organism uses extracellular secretions to make smart foraging decisions

  2013cited by this paper
• Philosophy of Biology

  2013cited by this paper
• Slime mold uses an externalized spatial “memory” to navigate in complex environments

  2012cited by this paper
• RNA dynamics in aging bacterial spores.

  2012cited by this paper
• Plasmodial incompatibility in the myxomycetes: a review

  2012cited by this paper
• Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior

  2010cited by this paper
• Food quality and the risk of light exposure affect patch-choice decisions in the slime mold Physarum polycephalum.

  2010cited by this paper
• Amoeboid organism solves complex nutritional challenges

  2010cited by this paper
• Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism

  2009cited by this paper
• Human Nature

  2009cited by this paper
• Beyond society: the evolution of organismality

  2009cited by this paper
• Darwinian populations and natural selection

  2009cited by this paper
• Discrimination Learning and Extinction in Paramecia (P. Caudatum)

  2006cited by this paper
• Eusociality: origin and consequences.

  2005cited by this paper
• Autopoiesis with or without cognition: defining life at its edge

  2004cited by this paper
• Obtaining multiple separate food sources: behavioural intelligence in the Physarum plasmodium

  2004cited by this paper
• From nonlinearity to optimality: pheromone trail foraging by ants

  2003cited by this paper
• Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism

  2000cited by this paper
• Olfactory associative learning in Caenorhabditis elegans is impaired in lrn-1 and lrn-2 mutants.

  1999cited by this paper
• The Extended Mind

  1998cited by this paper
• Evolution and Development

  1998cited by this paper
• Building a plasmodium: Development in the acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum

  1997cited by this paper
• Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber.

  1995cited by this paper
• The cognitive paradigm and the immunological homunculus.

  1992cited by this paper
• The honey bee colony as a superorganism.

  1989cited by this paper
• Assembly, disassembly, and movements of the microfilament-rich ridge during the amoeboflagellate transformation in Physarum polycephalum.

  1988cited by this paper
• Trail communication and directional recruitment to food in red wood ants (Formica)

  1987cited by this paper
• The organism as the subject and object of evolution

  1983cited by this paper
• The Definition and Recognition of Biological Adaptation

  1980cited by this paper
• Autopoiesis and Cognition

  1980cited by this paper
• What Are Dandelions and Aphids?

  1977cited by this paper
• THE EFFECTS OF SPORE AGE ON GERMINATION AND GAMETOPHYTE DEVELOPMENT IN POLYPODIUM VULGARE L.

  1975cited by this paper
• Sporulation in Physarum polycephalum: a model system for studies on differentiation.

  1969cited by this paper
• On the origin of mitosing cells

  1967cited by this paper
• Cryptobiosis in the larva of Polypedilum vanderplanki Hint. (Chironomidae)

  1960cited by this paper
• The Leeuwenhoek Lecture - The problem of anabiosis or latent life: history and current concept

  1959cited by this paper
• Food or training Paramecium.

  1957cited by this paper
• THE EXISTENCE OF PHYSIOLOGICAL STRAINS IN PHYSARUM POLYCEPHALUM

  1945cited by this paper
• Plant Succession. An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation

  1917cited by this paper
• The ant‐colony as an organism

  1911cited by this paper
• STUDIES ON REACTIONS TO STIMULI IN UNICELLULAR ORGANISMS. IX.—ON THE BEHAVIOR OF FIXED INFUSORIA (STENTOR AND VORTICELLA), WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE MODIFIABILITY OF PROTOZOAN REACTIONS

  1902cited by this paper
• The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits

  1881cited by this paper

• Health and Disease

  2026cites this paper
• Organic Progress and Evolutionary Theory

  2026cites this paper
• Temporal Cognition in Animals

  2026cites this paper
• Human Cognitive Diversity

  2025cites this paper
• On the prospects of basal cognition research becoming fully evolutionary: promising avenues and cautionary notes

  2025cites this paper
• Biology and Medical Theory

  2025cites this paper
• Cognition without neurons: modelling anticipation in a basal reservoir computer

  2025cites this paper
• The Organism

  2025cites this paper