Month: September 2022

FAILINGS OF REDUCTIONISM. “Several subfields of biology have discovered independently that detailed studies of the structure and function of individual parts in detail did not give them a good understanding of the emergent properties of the interactions of many parts within a whole system.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

PUTTING HUMPTY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. “Neuroscience, physiology, and ecology all converged independently on the idea that it was as important to study and model the system of parts and their interactions as to fully analyze the individual parts alone.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

SWINGS AND PENDULUMS. “While system-centric studies in specific subfields of biology can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the mid-1990s that systems biology developed into a major counter-movement that would grow to challenge the reductionist approach.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

NECESSARY TENSION. “Jacob is one of the fathers of modern Biology, and in his monumental work The Logic of Life he recounts the polarity that has always existed in biological science between analytical and synthetic traditions, between reductionism and holism.” https://lnkd.in/drJfrU7 View in LinkedIn

ADMISSION OF EMERGENCE. “Interestingly, however, although he is a model example of the reductionist tradition and one of the fathers of Molecular Biology, Jacob does not rule out the possibility of emergent properties.” https://lnkd.in/drJfrU7 View in LinkedIn

INTERPRETIVE THEORIES. “The new cover of Experimental Biology and Medicine features the hermeneutic circle of biology, a concept we have adapted from the hermeneutic principle that one understands the whole only in terms of each part and the parts only in terms of the whole.” https://lnkd.in/dgZEzC6 View in LinkedIn

2500 YEARS OF BIOLOGY. “Our hermeneutic circle summarizes the course of experimental biology through 2500 years of the achievements of reductionist research (understanding the parts), which culminates in our ability to rapidly sequence the genome.” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1535370214564534 View in LinkedIn

ABANDONING REDUCTIONISM. “Rather than returning along the same path in a constructionist approach that simply builds upon this knowledge, but in reverse, an alternative is to close the circle with synthetic constructions that seek to integrate the full complexity of biological and physiological systems (understanding the whole).” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1535370214564534 View in LinkedIn

IGNORING DIVERSITY HAS COSTS. “It no longer seems heretical to assert that our long-lasting and prevailing focus on a handful of animal model systems has been too reductionist. We will not understand life if we keep ignoring most of the existing diversity — there is more to learn about molecular biology, cell biology, neurobiology and developmental biology than the mouse, Drosophila or nematode worm can tell us.” http://extavourlab.com/pdfs/papers/2016_Extavour_CurrOpGenetDev.pdf View in LinkedIn

STUDY DIVERSITY. “From an evolutionary viewpoint, flies are highly modified crustaceans, so why not study a ‘real’ crustacean to start with? If insects are preferred, there are water striders, cockroaches and midges that can tell us more about this incredibly diverse group. Insects make up at least 90% of all the species of animals on earth.” http://extavourlab.com/pdfs/papers/2016_Extavour_CurrOpGenetDev.pdf View in LinkedIn