A week from today, Discovery Institute Press will release David Klinghoffer’s book Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome. It can be pre-ordered here. The book traces the ideas and the intellectual journey of mathematical biologist Richard Sternberg, who offers rigorous scientific evidence that the true control center of life lies not in DNA alone, but in a timeless, non-material mathematical structure. Influenced by the renowned theoretical biologist Robert Rosen, Sternberg carries forward the tradition of relational biology — a framework increasingly recognized by visionary scientists as a foundation for the future of biological understanding. Drawing on its principles, Sternberg anticipated many of the most significant biological discoveries of the past two decades.

Demise of Junk DNA

One of the clearest tests of the predictive power of evolutionary theory versus intelligent design concerns the proportion of the human genome that is nonfunctional. Under the evolutionary framework, a substantial amount of “junk DNA” — nonfunctional genetic material — is expected as a byproduct of random mutations (here, here, here). In contrast, proponents of intelligent design predicted that most of the genome would have a function, even if not yet fully understood. 

In 2002, Richard Sternberg published a paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences challenging the assumption that vast portions of the genome are nonfunctional, proposing instead that much of this DNA likely serves important biological roles, such as regulating protein production. Other intelligent design theorists, including Forrest Mims, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, also predicted function in junk DNA. Subsequent research by the ENCODE project and other groups has supported this view, demonstrating that most of the genome is biochemically functional and undermining the earlier assumption that “junk DNA” was largely useless (here, here).

Information Beyond DNA

Sternberg also anticipated decades ago that much of the information for life resides outside of DNA. Multiple studies have confirmed this prediction. Jonathan Wells provided several examples in his 2014 review article “Membrane Patterns Carry Ontogenetic Information That Is Specified Independently of DNA.” More recently, Oxford physiologist Denis Noble argued that DNA is not the privileged center of control for organisms, but instead, “organisms control their genomes.” He summarizes his dethroning of DNA as follows:

To think that the genome completely determines the organism is almost as absurd as thinking that the pipes in a large cathedral organ determine what the organist plays. Of course, it was the composer who did that in writing the score, and the organist himself who interprets it. The pipes are his passive instruments until he brings them to life in a pattern that he imposes on them, just as multi-cellular organisms use the same genome to generate all the 200 or so different types of cells in their bodies by activating different expression patterns.

Similarly, developmental and synthetic biologist Michael Levin, at Harvard and Tufts, has argued that an animal’s overall body architecture is not directly determined by DNA but by electric fields generated by the developing embryo. He has also argued (here) for higher levels in the organizational hierarchy controlling lower levels:

A top-down model would specify how the target morphology is represented within tissues, what cellular processes underlie the computations that drive the system from a novel starting condition to that goal state (and stop when it has been achieved), and how those computations about large-scale anatomical metrics become transduced into low-level marching orders for cells and molecular signalling cascades….Patterns of bioelectric signalling have been shown to serve as master regulators (module activators) and prepatterns for complex anatomical structures, coordinating downstream gene expression cascades and single cell behaviours towards specific patterning. 

These and other researchers have validated Sternberg’s expectation of an extended genome (i.e., information beyond DNA). 

Mind Before Matter

Sternberg’s most striking prediction is that the genome is immaterial, implying that standard algorithms do not govern biological processes. This non-algorithmic view of life is gaining increasing recognition. As I wrote here last week, Garte, Marshall, and Kauffman (2025) recently emphasized emerging research that not only supports the non-algorithmic nature of biology but also argues that life is fundamentally governed by cognition (see, “New Article Calls for a Philosophical Revolution in Biology, Placing Mind Over Matter”). The centrality of cognition is further emphasized in the Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology volume Evolution “On Purpose”: Teleonomy in Living Systems, edited by Peter A. Corning et al., which features multiple chapters defending the foundational role of cognition and advancing the case for goal-directedness and purpose in biological systems.

Professor Michael Levin, mentioned earlier, coincides still more strikingly with Sternberg by arguing (here) that biology is governed by Platonic forms:

Here, I discuss an unconventional research program into the origin of these patterns. I argue that genetics and environment are not sufficient to explain or make use of the remarkable intelligence of the agential material of life. I argue that the current reliance on emergence is a mysterian approach that limits progress, and instead propose a systematic investigation of the patterns of life and mind that ingress into both biological and synthetic embodiments. In short, I make the metaphysical hypothesis that the emergent patterns we observe are not random but are part of an ordered Platonic space of forms which have a causal influence on the outcomes of evolution and engineering. [Emphasis added.]

He even argues that some of the Platonic forms correspond to minds:

I have argued for a Pythagorean or radical Platonist view in which some of the causal input into mind and life originates outside the physical world. A number of mathematicians, computer scientists, and even physicists, including Heisenberg, Tegmark, Deutsch, Ellis, and Penrose have expressed variants of this stance. But this position is unpopular with philosophers of mind because it is fundamentally a dualist theory (by emphasizing causes that are not to be found in physical events), and implies panpsychism (because a very wide range of physical objects could be interfaces to varieties of minds). I have argued that a kind of panpsychism is unavoidable, and it seems that by taking what mathematicians do seriously, we have already abandoned the physicalist worldview; all that remains is to notice that evolution (not just human mathematicians) is exploring the same space of patterns and embrace the idea that since we are patterns too, patterns can be agential (and thus, Platonic space can include minds, not just passive truths). [Emphasis added.]

Sternberg may well have predicted and laid the groundwork for the next great scientific revolution. Only time will tell.