Life Itself

by Rosen, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780231075657
• ISBN10: 0231075650
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Why are living things alive? As a theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen saw this as the most fundamental of all questions-and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science. The answers to this question would allow humanity to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of the principles at work in our world.For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system-thereby gaining an understanding of the whole.However, Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. Life Itself, a landmark work, represents the scientific and intellectual journey that led Rosen to question reductionism and develop new scientific approaches to understanding the nature of life. Ultimately, Rosen proposes an answer to the original question about the causal basis of life in organisms. He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone.Central to Rosen's work is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts. In this sense, complexity refers to the causal impact of organization on the system as a whole. Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth-but of the universe itself.

Table of Contents

Foreword, BY T.F.H. ALLEN AND DAVID W. ROBERTS	xi
Preface	xiii
Note to the Reader	xv
Praeludium	1	(10)
Chapter 1 Prolegomenon	11	(13)
1A. What Is Life?	11	(4)
1B. Why the Problem Is Hard	15	(5)
1C. The Machine Metaphor in Biology	20	(4)
Chapter 2 Strategic Considerations: The Special and the General	24	(15)
2A. Basic Concepts	24	(2)
2B. From General to Special	26	(2)
2C. From the Special to the General	28	(4)
2D. Induction and Deduction: A Preliminary Note	32	(2)
2E. On the Generality of Physics	34	(5)
Chapter 3 Some Necessary Epistemological Considerations	39	(28)
3A. Back to Basics	39	(1)
3B. The First Basic Dualism	40	(1)
3C. The Second Basic Dualism	41	(2)
3D. Language	43	(3)
3E. On Entailment in Formal Systems	46	(3)
3F. On the Comparison of Formalisms	49	(6)
3G. Entailment in the Ambience: Causality	55	(2)
3H. The Modeling Relation and Natural Law	57	(7)
3I. Metaphor	64	(3)
Chapter 4 The Concept of State	67	(41)
4A. Systems and States	67	(2)
4B. Chronicles	69	(2)
4C. Recursive Chronicles	71	(3)
4D. Recursion: Some General Features	74	(4)
4E. On Taylor's Theorem	78	(3)
4F. Recursion and Constraints	81	(3)
4G. Coping with Nonrecursiveness: Recursion and Constraint in Sets of Chronicles	84	(5)
4H. Newton's Laws	89	(9)
4I. On Entailment in Physics: Cause and Effect	98	(5)
4J. Quantum Mechanics, Open Systems, and Related Matters	103	(5)
Chapter 5 Entailment Without States: Relational Biology	108	(44)
5A. A New Direction	108	(1)
5B. Nicolas Rashevsky	109	(4)
5C. On the Concept of "Organization" in Physics	113	(2)
5D. The Concept of Function	115	(2)
5E. On the Strategy of Relational Modeling	117	(3)
5F. The Component	120	(3)
5G. Systems from Components	123	(4)
5H. Entailments in Relational Systems	127	(4)
5I. Finalistic Entailment: Function and Finality	131	(3)
5J. Augmented Abstract Block Diagrams	134	(4)
5K. Finality in Augmented Abstract Block Diagrams	138	(5)
5L. The Theory of Categories	143	(9)
Chapter 6 Analytic and Synthetic Models	152	(30)
6A. Modeling Relations	152	(2)
6B. Some Preliminaries: Equivalence Relations	154	(6)
6C. Analysis and Cartesian Products	160	(6)
6D. Direct Sums	166	(7)
6E. Analytic and Synthetic: Comparison and Contrast	173	(4)
6F. The Category of all Models of S	177	(5)
Chapter 7 On Simulation	182	(20)
7A. The Machine Concept	182	(2)
7B. Some General Heuristic Remarks	184	(2)
7C. The Algorithm	186	(4)
7D. Simulation and Programming	190	(4)
7E. Simulation and Programming Continued	194	(4)
7F. Simulations and Models	198	(4)
Chapter 8 Machines and Mechanisms	202	(13)
8A. Review	202	(1)
8B. Machines and Mechanisms	203	(2)
8C. On the Largest Model of a Mechanism	205	(1)
8D. On the Smallest Models of a Mechanism	206	(1)
8E. Maximum Model from Minimal Models	206	(3)
8F. On States and Recursivity in Mechanisms	209	(1)
8G. Synthesis and Antisynthesis: Fractionability	210	(2)
8H. Mechanisms and Contemporary Physics	212	(3)
Chapter 9 Relational Theory of Machines	215	(29)
9A. Machines	215	(1)
9B. The Basic Ideas	216	(7)
9C. The Second Step	223	(5)
9D. Entailment in Machine Models	228	(3)
9E. The Third Step	231	(4)
9F. The Central Argument: The Limitations of Entailment in Machines and Mechanisms	235	(6)
9G. Conclusions	241	(3)
Chapter 10 Life Itself: The Preliminary Steps	244	(10)
10A. The Answer	244	(1)
10B. The "Machine Metaphor" Revisited	245	(3)
10C. Relational Models of Organisms	248	(4)
10D. A Word About Fabrication	252	(2)
Chapter 11 Relational Biology and Biology	254	(29)
11A. What Is Biology?	254	(1)
11B. The Paradoxes of Evolution	255	(3)
11C. Mendel, Heredity, and Genetics	258	(3)
11D. Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology	261	(2)
11E. Chemistry and Sequence	263	(4)
11F. Protein Folding and Morphogenesis	267	(8)
11G. A Word on Entailment in Evolution	275	(4)
11H. Relational Biology and Its Realizations	279	(4)
Index	283