Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
INTEGRATIVE SYSTEMS VIEW OF LIFE:
PERSPECTIVES FROM GENERAL
SYSTEMS THINKING
J. Yasha Kresh
Departments of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Medicine,
Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia
The application of systems thinking and the principles of general systems science to
problems in the life sciences is not a new endeavor. In the 1960s systems theory and bi-
ology attracted the interest of many notable biologists, cyberneticists, mathematicians,
and engineers. The avalanche of new quantitative data (genome, proteome, physiome) in-
cited by the boundless advances in molecular and cellular biology has reawakened inter-
est in and kindled rediscovery of formal model-building techniques. The manifold
perspectives presented in many ways is a re-embodiment of the general theory of organ-
ismic systems and serves as an impetus to suggest that organized complexity can be un-
derstood. The particular affinity expressed in this essay is a reflection of how closely my
thinking is associated with the thoughts of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Ervin Laszlo, and
Robert Rosen. We are, by all accounts, at the threshold of a postgenomic era that truly
belongs to the biology of systems.
Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen,
but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which
everybody sees.
—Schopenhauer
Systems here ... systems there ... systems everywhere
Address correspondence to: J. Yasha Kresh, Departments of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Medi-
cine, Drexel University College of Medicine, 245 North 15th Street, MS#111, Philadelphia, PA
19102-1192 (JKresh@DrexelMed.edu).
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