Year: 2022

SCALES. "It may be difficult to imagine that your body is made of spinning protons, neutrons, and electrons, but this is indeed the case. It's slightly easier, however, to picture forms of matter in levels that increase in complexity. For example, subatomic particles can be organized into atoms, which are the components of molecules, and molecules can be organized into macromolecules, such as DNA and proteins, which can be built into cells." https://lnkd.in/epkJVpt View in LinkedIn

ASCENDING COMPLEXITY. "Cells can then be organized into tissues, which form organs, and organs can be grouped into organ systems, which are built into entire organisms—including humans like you. Organisms are units that can form populations, and then biospheres, which go on to make up even greater levels of complexity." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn

VAST DIMENSIONS. "Biology is more complex than astronomy or physics or chemistry...In fact, it may be too complex for the human brain to comprehend. This complexity stems from the fact that biological processes range in size from the dimensions of an atom to those of a whale and in time from a billionth of a second to billions of seconds." https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

ENORMOUS FUNCTIONALITY. "Biological processes also have a tremendous dynamic range: for example, the human eye can detect a star at night that is one billionth as bright as objects viewed on a sunny day." https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

INCALCULABLE. "Looked at from a mathematical point of view, to create an accurate model of a single mammalian cell may require generating and then solving somewhere between 100,000 to one million equations." Multiply that by equations for each ascending scales of organization and the task verges on impossible. https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT PHENOMENA. "The crowning source of complication is that processes at all these different scales interact with one another: These multi-scale interactions produce emergent phenomena, including life and consciousness.” https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

NOT A SIMPLE SUM OF PARTS. "When units of biological material are put together, the properties of the new material are not always additive, or equal to the sum of the properties of the components. Instead, at each level, new properties and rules emerge that cannot be predicted by observations and full knowledge of the lower levels. Such properties are called emergent properties." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn

UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS. "A single-celled bacterium is alive, but if you separate the macromolecules that combined to create the bacterium, these units are not alive. Based on our knowledge of macromolecules, we would not have been able to predict that they could combine to form a living organism, nor could we have predicted all of the characteristics of the resulting bacterium." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn

SCALE GENERATES NEW PROPERTIES. "No matter how well we understand the physics and chemistry of living systems, we must recognize that living systems, and other high integrative levels, have new and unique properties that emerge through the combination of the lower-level units of matter." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn

SINGULAR LAYERS. "Likewise, our understanding of the new emergent properties at a higher level does not help us understand the properties of the lower levels, because each integrative level of organization has its own particular structure and emergent properties." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn