Can microorganisms compute?: Between electronic and biological signals

This article reconsiders the concept of computation by shifting attention from digital machines to biological and ecological processes. Rather than treating computation as an exclusively artificial or human-centred activity, it examines how living systems can be understood as natural computing in order to critically reconsider contemporary digital technology. The discussion begins with a re-examination of Toshiyuki Nakagaki’s experiments on slime moulds, introduced as evidence of ‘primitive intelligence’. While these experiments reveal remarkable problem-solving behaviour, they also expose epistemological risks, particularly the reduction of non-human processes either to anthropomorphic interpretations or to mechanistic models. To address these limitations, this study compares Beatrice Fazi’s philosophical account of computation with the process-oriented concept of natural computing developed by Yasuhiro Suzuki and Fuminori Akiba. Whereas Fazi emphasizes computation as the systematization of reality through quantitative abstraction, Suzuki and Akiba redefine natural computing as information processing based on sequential procedures and state transitions inherent in nature. Building on this perspective, this article analyses Paul DeMarinis and Soichiro Mihara’s artworks, in which microbial fuel cells operate as forms of indirect, oracular computing of ecological feedback systems. Consequently, I argue that natural computing offers an alternative framework for rethinking intelligence and computation beyond anthropomorphism and mechanization.