Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Towards philosophical foundations of Systems
Biology: introduction
Fred C. Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr and Hans V.
Westerhoff
1. SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: A NEW SCIENCE IN SEARCH OF
METHODOLOGIES AND PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS
The aim of systems biology is to understand how functional properties and
behaviour of living organisms are brought about by the interactions of their
constituents (Alberghina & Westerhoff, 2005). For new properties to arise in
interactions, the latter must effect or affect processes that are nonlinear in terms
of their kinetics or inhomogeneous in terms of their organization. Consequently,
precise and comprehensive, quantitative experimental analyses of living systems
at levels between the system and its molecules are a requirement for systems
biology, as is the accurate interpretation of the resulting experimental data. Both
need to be able to address systems that are complex enough to effect functionality
of life.
Contemporary systems biology is a vigorous and expanding discipline, in
many ways a successor to molecular biology and genomics on the one hand
and mathematical biology and biophysics on the other (Westerhoff & Palsson,
2004). It is perhaps unprecedented in its combination of biology with a great
many other sciences, from physics to ecology, mathematics to medicine and
linguistics to chemistry. Because systems biology is at the interface of so many
different scientific disciplines, because it tends to overstretch these disciplines
when implementing them, and because it bears on an issue that transcends all
other disciplines and perhaps even science as such ('What is life?'), the question
arises as to the nature of its philosophical foundations: Are they just a mixture of
