It's sometimes surprising to me we have such a deeply ingrained way of thinking about cells in biology, maybe that's what the authors are trying to challenge??? From reading this, I got the impression we tend to think of cells as having one "natural" or "proper" function? Lung cells are "supposed to" just line airways and wave their cilia to move mucus? To me this is a bit like if we insisted that a Roomba's "natural" state was only the straight lines it makes if on a bowling alley, and viewed its more complex navigation patterns in a living room as somehow "unexpected" or "unnatural." To me it's more logicaly that cells like any complex system, will express different behaviors in different environments?