Before a face has a shape, the tissue that will become it carries a pattern of voltages. Work on developmental bioelectricity — Michael Levin's group is the prominent name — shows these patterns can be rewritten and the anatomy follows. The experiments are real; what the patterns mean is still being argued about.
real experiments, meaning debated
Voltage maps across embryonic tissue appear before the structures they correspond to. Disturb the pattern — with ion-channel drugs, not gene edits — and the anatomy can be disturbed in patterned ways: eyes in new places, heads reorganised in flatworms.
audited ground
This is not the nervous system's fast signalling. It is slow, steady-state voltage held by ordinary cells — the same membrane physics as the previous chapter, read at the scale of a tissue rather than a single cell.
held open — unsettled
Whether the voltage pattern is a code, a bias, a coordination signal, or one factor among several is unsettled. The chapter should hold that open rather than claim a second genetic code made of charge.
