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Author: Erik Peterson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298198X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a "vital spark," and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a Third Way in biology, known by many names, including "the organic philosophy," which gave rise to C. H. Waddington's work in the subfield of epigenetics: an alternative to standard genetics and evolutionary biology that captured the attention of notable scientists from Francis Crick to Stephen Jay Gould. The Life Organic chronicles the influential biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and biochemists from both sides of the Atlantic who formed Joseph Needham's Theoretical Biology Club, defined and refined Third-Way thinking through the 1930s, and laid the groundwork for some of the most cutting-edge achievements in biology today. By tracing the persistence of organicism into the twenty-first century, this book also raises significant questions about how we should model the development of the discipline of biology going forward.
Author: Erik Peterson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298198X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Get Book Here
Book Description
As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a "vital spark," and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a Third Way in biology, known by many names, including "the organic philosophy," which gave rise to C. H. Waddington's work in the subfield of epigenetics: an alternative to standard genetics and evolutionary biology that captured the attention of notable scientists from Francis Crick to Stephen Jay Gould. The Life Organic chronicles the influential biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and biochemists from both sides of the Atlantic who formed Joseph Needham's Theoretical Biology Club, defined and refined Third-Way thinking through the 1930s, and laid the groundwork for some of the most cutting-edge achievements in biology today. By tracing the persistence of organicism into the twenty-first century, this book also raises significant questions about how we should model the development of the discipline of biology going forward.
Author: Ronald W. Shonkwiler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387709843
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 552
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Book Description
This text presents mathematical biology as a field with a unity of its own, rather than only the intrusion of one science into another. The book focuses on problems of contemporary interest, such as cancer, genetics, and the rapidly growing field of genomics.
Author: Pablo A. Iglesias
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262013347
Category : Biological control systems
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
A survey of how engineering techniques from control and systems theory can be used to help biologists understand the behavior of cellular systems.
Author: Nicholas F. Britton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1447100492
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
This self-contained introduction to the fast-growing field of Mathematical Biology is written for students with a mathematical background. It sets the subject in a historical context and guides the reader towards questions of current research interest. A broad range of topics is covered including: Population dynamics, Infectious diseases, Population genetics and evolution, Dispersal, Molecular and cellular biology, Pattern formation, and Cancer modelling. Particular attention is paid to situations where the simple assumptions of homogenity made in early models break down and the process of mathematical modelling is seen in action.
Author: Brett Calcott
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262294532
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Drawing on recent advances in evolutionary biology, prominent scholars return to the question posed in a pathbreaking book: how evolution itself evolved. In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published their influential book The Major Transitions in Evolution. The "transitions" that Maynard Smith and Szathmáry chose to describe all constituted major changes in the kinds of organisms that existed but, most important, these events also transformed the evolutionary process itself. The evolution of new levels of biological organization, such as chromosomes, cells, multicelled organisms, and complex social groups radically changed the kinds of individuals natural selection could act upon. Many of these events also produced revolutionary changes in the process of inheritance, by expanding the range and fidelity of transmission, establishing new inheritance channels, and developing more open-ended sources of variation. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry had planned a major revision of their work, but the death of Maynard Smith in 2004 prevented this. In this volume, prominent scholars (including Szathmáry himself) reconsider and extend the earlier book's themes in light of recent developments in evolutionary biology. The contributors discuss different frameworks for understanding macroevolution, prokaryote evolution (the study of which has been aided by developments in molecular biology), and the complex evolution of multicellularity.
Author: Alvaro Moreno
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401798370
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge.
Author: Brian Munsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262347113
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 729
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Book Description
An introduction to the quantitative modeling of biological processes, presenting modeling approaches, methodology, practical algorithms, software tools, and examples of current research. The quantitative modeling of biological processes promises to expand biological research from a science of observation and discovery to one of rigorous prediction and quantitative analysis. The rapidly growing field of quantitative biology seeks to use biology's emerging technological and computational capabilities to model biological processes. This textbook offers an introduction to the theory, methods, and tools of quantitative biology. The book first introduces the foundations of biological modeling, focusing on some of the most widely used formalisms. It then presents essential methodology for model-guided analyses of biological data, covering such methods as network reconstruction, uncertainty quantification, and experimental design; practical algorithms and software packages for modeling biological systems; and specific examples of current quantitative biology research and related specialized methods. Most chapters offer problems, progressing from simple to complex, that test the reader's mastery of such key techniques as deterministic and stochastic simulations and data analysis. Many chapters include snippets of code that can be used to recreate analyses and generate figures related to the text. Examples are presented in the three popular computing languages: Matlab, R, and Python. A variety of online resources supplement the the text. The editors are long-time organizers of the Annual q-bio Summer School, which was founded in 2007. Through the school, the editors have helped to train more than 400 visiting students in Los Alamos, NM, Santa Fe, NM, San Diego, CA, Albuquerque, NM, and Fort Collins, CO. This book is inspired by the school's curricula, and most of the contributors have participated in the school as students, lecturers, or both. Contributors John H. Abel, Roberto Bertolusso, Daniela Besozzi, Michael L. Blinov, Clive G. Bowsher, Fiona A. Chandra, Paolo Cazzaniga, Bryan C. Daniels, Bernie J. Daigle, Jr., Maciej Dobrzynski, Jonathan P. Doye, Brian Drawert, Sean Fancer, Gareth W. Fearnley, Dirk Fey, Zachary Fox, Ramon Grima, Andreas Hellander, Stefan Hellander, David Hofmann, Damian Hernandez, William S. Hlavacek, Jianjun Huang, Tomasz Jetka, Dongya Jia, Mohit Kumar Jolly, Boris N. Kholodenko, Markek Kimmel, Michał Komorowski, Ganhui Lan, Heeseob Lee, Herbert Levine, Leslie M Loew, Jason G. Lomnitz, Ard A. Louis, Grant Lythe, Carmen Molina-París, Ion I. Moraru, Andrew Mugler, Brian Munsky, Joe Natale, Ilya Nemenman, Karol Nienałtowski, Marco S. Nobile, Maria Nowicka, Sarah Olson, Alan S. Perelson, Linda R. Petzold, Sreenivasan Ponnambalam, Arya Pourzanjani, Ruy M. Ribeiro, William Raymond, William Raymond, Herbert M. Sauro, Michael A. Savageau, Abhyudai Singh, James C. Schaff, Boris M. Slepchenko, Thomas R. Sokolowski, Petr Šulc, Andrea Tangherloni, Pieter Rein ten Wolde, Philipp Thomas, Karen Tkach Tuzman, Lev S. Tsimring, Dan Vasilescu, Margaritis Voliotis, Lisa Weber
Author: Manfred Dietrich Laubichler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026212291X
Category : Biology
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
Experts examine new modeling strategies for the interpretation of biological data and their integration into the conceptual framework of theoretical biology, detailing approaches that focus on morphology, development, behavior, or evolution. Abstract and conceptual models have become an indispensable tool for analyzing the flood of highly detailed empirical data generated in recent years by advanced techniques in the biosciences. Scientists are developing new modeling strategies for analyzing data, integrating results into the conceptual framework of theoretical biology, and formulating new hypotheses. In Modeling Biology, leading scholars investigate new modeling strategies in the domains of morphology, development, behavior, and evolution. The emphasis on models in the biological sciences has been accompanied by a new focus on conceptual issues and a more complex understanding of epistemological concepts. Contributors to Modeling Biology discuss models and modeling strategies from the perspectives of philosophy, history, and applied mathematics. Individual chapters discuss specific approaches to modeling in such domains as biological form, development, and behavior. Finally, the book addresses the modeling of these properties in the context of evolution, with a particular emphasis on the emerging field of evolutionary developmental biology (or evo-devo). Contributors Giorgio A. Ascoli, Chandrajit Bajaj, James P. Collins, Luciano da Fontoura Costa, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Nigel R. Franks, Scott Gilbert, Marta Ibañes Miguez, Juan Carlos Izpisúa-Belmonte, Alexander S. Klyubin, Thomas J. Koehnle, Manfred D. Laubichler, Sabina Leonelli, James A. R. Marshall, George R. McGhee Jr., Gerd B. Müller, Chrystopher L. Nehaniv, Karl J. Niklas, Lars Olsson, Eirikur Palsson, Daniel Polani, Diego Rasskin Gutman, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Alexei V. Samsonovich, Jeffrey C. Schank, Harry B. M. Uylings, Jaap van Pelt, Iain Werry
Author: Daniel S. Brooks
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262045338
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Scientific philosophers examine the nature and significance of levels of organization, a core structural principle in the biological sciences. This volume examines the idea of levels of organization as a distinct object of investigation, considering its merits as a core organizational principle for the scientific image of the natural world. It approaches levels of organization--roughly, the idea that the natural world is segregated into part-whole relationships of increasing spatiotemporal scale and complexity--in terms of its roles in scientific reasoning as a dynamic, open-ended idea capable of performing multiple overlapping functions in distinct empirical settings. The contributors--scientific philosophers with longstanding ties to the biological sciences--discuss topics including the philosophical and scientific contexts for an inquiry into levels; whether the concept can actually deliver on its organizational promises; the role of levels in the development and evolution of complex systems; conditional independence and downward causation; and the extension of the concept into the sociocultural realm. Taken together, the contributions embrace the diverse usages of the term as aspects of the big picture of levels of organization. Contributors Jan Baedke, Robert W. Batterman, Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, Markus I. Eronen, Carl Gillett, Sara Green, James Griesemer, Alan C. Love, Angela Potochnik, Thomas Reydon, Ilya Tëmkin, Jon Umerez, William C. Wimsatt, James Woodward
Author: Ina Goy
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110372401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
During the last twenty years, Kant's theory of biology has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and developed into a field which is growing rapidly in importance within Kant studies. The volume presents fifteen interpretative essays written by experts working in the field, covering topics from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century biological theories, the development of the philosophy of biology in Kant's writings, the theory of organisms in Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, and current perspectives on the teleology of nature.
