But I’m also not alone; sometimes his own colleagues can’t even follow his arguments. I mean this as a true compliment: When’s the last time we had a genuine mad scientist on our hands? Critics accuse Levin of all kinds of teleological crimes — making unfalsifiable claims, using words in ways that render those words meaningless. There, at the bench, he’s working to prove his metaphysics by running old-school (in a way) biological experiments. “The only thing that ever settles arguments is technology,” Levin tells me, a line he borrowed from biophysicist Chris Fields.