Participants frequently cite the article as a thought-provoking critique of mechanistic metaphors in biology, emphasizing the fluid, self-organizing nature of cells with phrases like 'cells aren’t clockwork' and 'messy, stochastic, self-organizing storms.' The tone is analytical and passionate, reflecting both curiosity and a desire to push scientific understanding forward.
AgreementModerate agreement
Most discussions support the idea that cells are more dynamic and complex than traditional machine models, acknowledging the challenges in using mechanical metaphors.
InterestHigh interest
The discussion reflects a high level of engagement, with many participants expressing curiosity about the biological intricacies and implications of the article.
EngagementHigh engagement
Posts include references to scientific papers, debates about metaphors, and calls for further exploration, indicating deep engagement.
ImpactModerate impact
The discussions highlight the importance of moving beyond outdated models, potentially influencing how biology is understood and taught, though some skepticism remains about metaphors.
Abstract in brief
The traditional view of the cell as a machine suggests that its functions and processes can be fully explained through a straightforward, deterministic, and reductionist approach, much like how we understand man-made machines.
Recent advances in experimental techniques, especially those tracking individual molecules in real-time, reveal complexities—such as fluidity, self-organization, and randomness—that challenge this machine analogy, indicating that cells are more dynamic and adaptable than rigid machines.
New research highlights that to truly understand the cell, scientists need to focus on its self-organizing behavior, the flexible nature of its components, and the nonlinear, probabilistic processes that govern its functions, moving beyond the traditional machine model.]
30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far more complex—and beautiful—than any machines made by human hands.
In this, amongst my favorite essays of all time, a philosopher points to four areas of https://t.co/XssAtY6Tqz
Aug 27, 2024 · 325 likes · 63 shares · 44,464 followersView post →
KW
Kirsty Wan
@micromotility · X
very deep and interesting read!
How does one even begin to formulate a "theoretical conceptualisation" of the biological cell?
and here's the link https://t.co/cnU69dFfsQ https://t.co/4iHyBWn6gB
@ObserverSuns I'm not sure if they really work this mechanistically i thought recent work showed it was a lot more brownian motion that we previous thought. Not a bio expert, very willing to be wrong
https://t.co/wW0O8nXcR9
Mar 2, 2023 · 26 likes · 2,625 followersView post →
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CF856
@CoFore856 · X
@redaction mandatory reading for you
https://t.co/j8M4FyCpkh https://t.co/hlSpUOiaR4
Oct 25, 2025 · 18 likes · 3 shares · 25 followersView post →
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Mustafa
@oprydai · X
just finished reading “is the cell really a machine?” by Nicholson
> cells aren’t clockwork; they’re messy, stochastic, self-organizing storms of molecules. way closer to fluid dynamics than gears & levers.
> biology isn’t engineering, it’s physics in motion https://t.co/dhskRpGo3R
Aug 27, 2025 · 12 likes · 44,055 followersView post →
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FrezzaLab
@FrezzaLab · X
@philipcball I find metaphors dangerous since they implicitly describe mechanisms or functions that may not be validated (as you mention for the "gene"). The metaphor of the cell as a machine is similarly problematic, and Daniel Nicholson has discussed this, see here https://t.co/QojWR5ZDkX
Benjamin De Bari challenges traditional views in cognitive science by proposing organisms as dissipative structures. He explores how this perspective explains phenomena like anticipation and behavior, providing new…
The traditional view of the cell as a machine suggests that its functions and processes can be fully explained through a straightforward, deterministic, and reductionist approach, much like how we understand man-made…
@NikoMcCarty Brains infer too much. I thought books (essays).
Papers are better because of the wide variety of outlooks to which you can be exposed.
"Is the cell really a machine?" is paywalled but no problem. AI can still produce a detailed summary.
RT @CoFore856: @redaction mandatory reading for you
https://t.co/j8M4FyCpkh https://t.co/hlSpUOiaR4
Oct 26, 2025 · 3 shares · 1,497 followersView post →
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Rice Blues
@BluesRice · X
RT @CoFore856: @redaction mandatory reading for you
https://t.co/j8M4FyCpkh https://t.co/hlSpUOiaR4
Oct 25, 2025 · 3 shares · 690 followersView post →
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CF856
@CoFore856 · X
@redaction mandatory reading for you
https://t.co/j8M4FyCpkh https://t.co/hlSpUOiaR4
Oct 25, 2025 · 18 likes · 3 shares · 25 followersView post →
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Julian Gough
@juliangough · X
@elocinationn I totally agree.
Have you read Daniel Nicholson’s paper, “Is the cell really a machine?”
Superb paper, I think you would like it a lot.
https://t.co/d7d4paSYty
just finished reading “is the cell really a machine?” by Nicholson
> cells aren’t clockwork; they’re messy, stochastic, self-organizing storms of molecules. way closer to fluid dynamics than gears & levers.
> biology isn’t engineering, it’s physics in motion https://t.co/dhskRpGo3R
Aug 27, 2025 · 12 likes · 44,055 followersView post →
ML
Manuel Lino
@manuelino_ · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Feb 13, 2025 · 63 shares · 1,758 followersView post →
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Mohanlal
@Mohanlal1018092 · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
This was such a fantastic series of articles. 'Is the cell *really* a machine?' which this led me to, is one of the best scientific essays I've ever read https://t.co/SOEOyfEIWe
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 735 followersView post →
GF
Genki Fukasawa
@gen_o925 · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 74 followersView post →
IP
Ismael Mullor Ruiz. PhD
@IsmaMullor · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 1,138 followersView post →
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Matt Watson
@BioAndBaseball · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 2,988 followersView post →
BG
barry goldman
@barrygoldman1 · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 699 followersView post →
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Evan
@EvanH176 · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 555 followersView post →
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GOON MASTER SOPHONT SIMP
@SOPHONTSIMP · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 2,233 followersView post →
RH
Renee LeTissier Boogren (she/her)
@rletissier · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 488 followersView post →
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Eben Bayer
@ebenbayer · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 6,061 followersView post →
TD
Traditional Dravidian
@TradDrav · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 282 followersView post →
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Ahmed Ezat
@AhmedAdelEzat · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 95 followersView post →
DS
Daniel S.
@asecretcrow · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 541 followersView post →
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Tequehead
@tequehead · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 345 followersView post →
PS
Petr Svoboda
@SvobodaLab · X
RT @NikoMcCarty: 30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far m…
Aug 27, 2024 · 63 shares · 4,541 followersView post →
NM
Niko McCarty.
@NikoMcCarty · X
30 Essays to Make You Love Biology
Day 25. "Is the cell really a machine?" by Daniel J. Nicholson
Living cells are far more complex—and beautiful—than any machines made by human hands.
In this, amongst my favorite essays of all time, a philosopher points to four areas of https://t.co/XssAtY6Tqz
Aug 27, 2024 · 325 likes · 63 shares · 44,464 followersView post →
F
FrezzaLab
@FrezzaLab · X
@philipcball I find metaphors dangerous since they implicitly describe mechanisms or functions that may not be validated (as you mention for the "gene"). The metaphor of the cell as a machine is similarly problematic, and Daniel Nicholson has discussed this, see here https://t.co/QojWR5ZDkX
@SterlingCooley It also seems tangentially related to theories of entropy, self organisation, and some sort of bigger ‘theory of everything’ that may tie it all together.
Have you read the paper: Is the cell really a machine? (Nicholson, 2019)
Biology at a micro level is such a blast to study
@NikoMcCarty A great article that touches motor proteins as a case study is "Is the cell really a machine?" https://t.co/BxVIPg2zgh
It takes issue with the mechanical depiction of that animation (and machine analogies for biology in general).
Well worth a read!
Jan 9, 2024 · 1 like · 1 share · 227 followersView post →
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Eduardo De la Rosa
@delarosaceae · X
@miangoar It is quite astounding and yet these are only snapshots of the fluid nature of molecular complexes. As a fellow collector of papers I'll leave you this one regarding the limitations of the metaphor of machines in biology: https://t.co/rK7oeUod18
RT @subanima_: Can scientific animations mislead us? Certainly. In this video, I unpack some of the popular depictions of 'molecular machin…
Nov 3, 2023 · 12 shares · 1,471 followersView post →
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WCI
@WaltherCancerIn · X
RT @ArtificialOther: Is the cell really a machine? - Daniel J. Nicholson https://t.co/kczSszJn6a
Oct 24, 2023 · 1 share · 1,127 followersView post →
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Phil Frana
@ArtificialOther · X
Is the cell really a machine? - Daniel J. Nicholson https://t.co/kczSszJn6a
Oct 24, 2023 · 2 likes · 1 share · 4,419 followersView post →
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Nichole Price
@nichole_null · X
RT @subanima_: Can scientific animations mislead us? Certainly. In this video, I unpack some of the popular depictions of 'molecular machin…
Oct 12, 2023 · 12 shares · 1,561 followersView post →
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Daniel Goldman
@dgoldman.bsky.social · Bluesky
I mean, I don't write on just one subject. And much of my work is already peer reviewed, in the true sense, of being consumed by the academic community. Though we should normalize reply style articles, like "Reply to 'Is the cell really a machine?'"
scholar.google.com/citations?us...
@NikoMcCarty I enjoyed 'Is the cell really a machine?' I've been working on research that very much treats cells as modular, programable machines which makes it easy to forget how wild life is. A a shape cut out of entropy that propagates itself through time.
Aug 20, 2023 · 1 like · 2 shares · 1,377 followersView post →
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Joseph Moran
@MoranLabChem · X
RT @SteinbockGroup: @philipcball Good opportunity to spread the word about this nice paper by Nicholson titled "Is the cell really a machin…
Aug 10, 2023 · 5 shares · 6,354 followersView post →
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Luiz Pessoa
@PessoaBrain · X
@manlius84 @philipcball @ChristophAdami Have in mind approaches that are more continuous and dynamic. But you're right, it all depends on what we mean by code, representations, machine view of biology/brain, and so on. Several themes developed by Daniel Nicholson here (in the context of a cell):
https://t.co/sShT60YFd9 https://t.co/36PuxrPdR0
Aug 10, 2023 · 4 likes · 46,399 followersView post →
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afmmenchacalab
@afmmenchacalab · X
RT @SteinbockGroup: @philipcball Good opportunity to spread the word about this nice paper by Nicholson titled "Is the cell really a machin…
Aug 10, 2023 · 5 shares · 386 followersView post →
TG
Theory of Living Matter Group
@TLM_Cambridge · X
RT @SteinbockGroup: @philipcball Good opportunity to spread the word about this nice paper by Nicholson titled "Is the cell really a machin…
Aug 10, 2023 · 5 shares · 4,175 followersView post →
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Catalyst
@ayusmansen · X
RT @SteinbockGroup: @philipcball Good opportunity to spread the word about this nice paper by Nicholson titled "Is the cell really a machin…
Aug 10, 2023 · 5 shares · 1,248 followersView post →
OS
Oliver Steinbock
@SteinbockGroup · X
@philipcball Good opportunity to spread the word about this nice paper by Nicholson titled "Is the cell really a machine?" https://t.co/0sjQs5x0Ry
Aug 10, 2023 · 11 likes · 5 shares · 604 followersView post →
JG
Julian Gough
@juliangough · X
@philipcball @NicholsonHPBio Oh I love Daniel. (I found his paper “Is the cell really a machine?” deeply inspirational.)
The book sounds excellent! Well done, and good luck…
very deep and interesting read!
How does one even begin to formulate a "theoretical conceptualisation" of the biological cell?
and here's the link https://t.co/cnU69dFfsQ https://t.co/4iHyBWn6gB
@ObserverSuns I'm not sure if they really work this mechanistically i thought recent work showed it was a lot more brownian motion that we previous thought. Not a bio expert, very willing to be wrong
https://t.co/wW0O8nXcR9
Mar 2, 2023 · 26 likes · 2,625 followersView post →
@KordingLab @Bahramani99 Daniel J Nicholson has some interesting stuff to check out. Nicholson discusses whether we should abandon the notion of thinking of cells as machines and consider them as self-organizing processes instead: https://t.co/K58BGr3Kuo
@michael_nielsen But these, and the cells they are part of, are not, in fact, machines. They are something else entirely, for which the physics has not been worked out. https://t.co/4ZWzEtRxca
Dec 31, 2020 · 1 like · 2,393 followersView post →
NM
network_motif
@network_motif · X
links to the article:
https://t.co/WRmhrYxDoO
https://t.co/PZ1ZisCGmN
RT @KLIAustria: Following our Tuesday Colloquium with Fellow @nicholsonhpbio on the legacy of Schrödinger’s "What is Life?", today's #KLILa…
Oct 10, 2019 · 4 shares · 2,338 followersView post →
BT
Biological Theory
@BiolTheory · X
RT @KLIAustria: Following our Tuesday Colloquium with Fellow @nicholsonhpbio on the legacy of Schrödinger’s "What is Life?", today's #KLILa…
Oct 10, 2019 · 4 shares · 2,239 followersView post →
TB
The BJPS
@TheBJPS · X
RT @KLIAustria: Following our Tuesday Colloquium with Fellow @nicholsonhpbio on the legacy of Schrödinger’s "What is Life?", today's #KLILa…
Oct 10, 2019 · 4 shares · 6,231 followersView post →
SA
Science Austria
@ScienceAustria · X
RT @KLIAustria: Following our Tuesday Colloquium with Fellow @nicholsonhpbio on the legacy of Schrödinger’s "What is Life?", today's #KLILa…
Oct 10, 2019 · 4 shares · 604 followersView post →
KM
KLI: A Home to Theory that Matters
@KLIAustria · X
Following our Tuesday Colloquium with Fellow @nicholsonhpbio on the legacy of Schrödinger’s "What is Life?", today's #KLILab continues by reading Dan's latest paper, ’Is the Cell Really a Machine?’, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
https://t.co/vuPBo3cOgG https://t.co/ERY298gICc
Oct 10, 2019 · 9 likes · 4 shares · 2,654 followersView post →
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William
@WilliamPeerPeer · X
Mechanistic views are the norm in Neuroscience and Biology research, including on AD and ALS. However, proteins are not solid 3D structures, but rather semi-folded fluids. Could a corresponding paradigm shift enable new insights?
https://t.co/sDOfCrgwzj
Daniel J. Nicholson,. Is the cell really a machine?, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 477, (108-126), (2019).https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2019.06.002.
ALZHEIMER'S concept and new treatment suggestions | PDF ...
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage effects on amyloid beta peptide production. ... org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.07.005 ebral blood flow in normal aging.
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