Living in a physical world

Journal of biosciences

Steven Vogel1¹ 

[1] Biology Department, Box 90338, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708–0338, USA$$

关键词: Cancer recurrence;    cancer stem cells;    neosis;    phoenix rising;    therapeutic resistance;    tumour relapse;   

DOI  :  

来源: Indian Academy of Sciences

【 摘 要 】

The diversity of life on earth dazzles all of us – the rich profusion of its designs, the wide size range of its organisms, the complexities of its hierarchical levels, and so forth. Undaunted, we life scientists seek broadly applicable rules, common patterns of organizations, and order beneath the perceptual chaos; we look for alternatives to the easy answers of revealed truth.Biology, no less than the physical sciences, treads this bumpy path – indeed the overt diversity of life puts especially bad bumps in its way. Perhaps its special difficulty underlies the gradual estrangement of biology from the more obviously successful physics of the post-Newtonian era and its awkward reintegration into the larger world of science in the twentieth century. That process remains incomplete; blame, if leveled, rests on the untidiness and distinctiveness of the subject. The tidy formulas of Newtonian physics work even less well for us than they do for, say, practicing engineers. Life directs its chemistry with sets of governing molecules and carries it out with the aid of catalysts of breathtaking specificity. And biology enjoys a strange organizing principle, evolution by natural selection, barely hinted at elsewhere in science.No aspect of this reintegration has been (and continues to be) more successful than what we have come to call molecular biology – a statement at once fashionable and incontrovertible, one with which I have no grounds to take issue. What matters here, indeed the entire justification for the essays that begin with the one here, comes down to the following. The very success of this chemically-reductionist biology too easily diverts us from other conjunctions of physical science and biology.This series will explore aspects of biology that reflect the physical world in which organisms find themselves. Evolution can do wonders, but it cannot escape its earthy context – a certain temperature range, a particular gravitational acceleration, the physical properties of air and water, and so forth. Nor can it tamper with mathematics. The baseline they provide both imposes constraints and affords opportunities. I mean to explore both.And I will take what other biologists might find an unfamiliar approach – one, by the way, that I have found productive enough to recommend. Instead of asking about the physical science behind a specific biological system, I will consider aspects of the physical world and ask what organisms, any organisms, make of each, both how they might capitalize on them and be in some fashion limited by them. In effect, this will be a search for commonalities and patterns, the only unusual feature being the physical rather than biochemical or phylogenetic bases. If this approach to science were a dart game, I would be thrown out – for throwing darts at a wall first and only subsequently painting targets around the points of impact.The series will concern itself mainly (but not exclusively) with organisms rather than ecosystems or organelles. It will follow the author’s bias and personal experience toward mechanical matters, doing less than equal justice to radiations and electrical phenomena. It will be speculative, opinionated, and idiosyncratic, aiming to stimulate thought and perhaps even investigation, to open doors rather than just describing them.When I began to do science, over forty years ago, I wondered first whether and then where I would get ideas worth pursuing. Now, on the cusp of retirement, I wonder what I am going to do with my accumulated headand notebooks-full of questions. Maybe we need something like a patent expiration date – if one does nothing with a hypothesis for some number of years, it should somehow revert to the public domain. I am not an unequivocal advocate of a strict rule, inasmuch as I have, on occasion, resurrected one of my old ideas, applying some additional insight or new tool in my experimental armamentarium – or just responding to a renewed interest. Still, these essays should, if nothing else, provide an opportunity to air untested ideas with some hope that others might care to pursue them.

【 授权许可】

Unknown