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MAINSTREAM PATHOLOGY. “The history of medical thought reveals that the understanding of disease has oscillated back and forth between two opposing conceptions. According to the so-called physiological conception, diseases result from disturbances in the functional equilibrium of the body, and their cure reflects the harmonious restoration of this equilibrium. In contrast, the so-called ontological conception views diseases as foreign entities that enter the body, and their cure implies the expulsion of the intruders.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

SUSPENDED FLUFF. “Clouds consist of a suspension of liquid or solid (ice) particles in air. Thus, formally, a cloud is an aerosol, a suspension of particles in air. However, it is useful to distinguish clouds from clear-air (noncloud) "aerosols. The cloud environment is slightly supersaturated with respect to liquid water or ice, respectively.” https://lnkd.in/dHZs9ca View in LinkedIn

SPECIES AS PROCESSES. “Another common complaint is that species have very fuzzy boundaries, whereas individuals typically do not. Interestingly, once we see species not just as individuals, but as individual processes, we are able to address both of these concerns.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

SPECIES AS INDIVIDUALS. “Michael Ghiselin (1974) and David Hull (1976, 1978) advanced the thesis that species are not kinds but individuals. Although the species-as-individuals view has become widely accepted, it continues to encounter some resistance on the grounds that it is puzzling and counterintuitive. It is objected for example that, as the members of a species are discrete and relatively independent, it is not clear how they can be identified as parts of an individual.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

THE SPECIES THORN. “One of the earliest debates in modern philosophy of biology concerned the metaphysical status of species.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

ORGANISMS AS DEVELOPMENTAL CYCLES. “In fact, this is the view of evolution that developmental systems theorists have been advocating for many years, with the vital corollary that evolution can be driven by changes to any of the factors that contribute to reproducing the developmental cycle.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

PROCESS EVOLUTION. “While it is self-evident that evolution is a process, it is less clear how we should think about the nature of the entities that participate in this process. The traditional substantialist stance has been to regard them as things. Process ontology, of course, leads us to understand them as processes. If organisms are developmental cycles, then we should regard these developmental cycles, rather than the thing-like time slices that we abstract from them, as the actual entities that compose the evolutionary process.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

LOW FIDELITY. “Because these epigenetic inheritance systems typically depend on chemical diffusion and molecular transport processes, they exhibit far lower degrees of fidelity than the nucleic acid coding mechanism characteristic of genetic replication.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

THE NEW INHERITANCE. “In the end, a process ontology forces us to expand our understanding of inheritance itself. Recognizing the material overlap between parent and offspring in reproduction makes it obvious that what gets transmitted is much more than just the DNA. The material (i.e. cytoplasmic) continuum that exists between parent and offspring includes many molecular systems that can be inherited apart from the genome, such as macromolecular steady states and self-sustaining metabolic loops.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes this weekend on the theme of process ontology, rather than a world of things. This perspective becomes interesting when pathology is considered, where developments in thinking about the microbiome have introduced the concept of a balance between symbiotic organisms, and when there is an unbalance or dysbiosis, pathology can emerge, driven not by bad bugs per se but by the shift in balance. View in LinkedIn