Multicellular Systems - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 544

Table 15.9 The similarities and differences between the biological theories developed by J. A. S.
Kelso and S. Ji

Kelso (1984, 2008) Ji (1974a, b, 2000, 2004a)

1. System studied Human body Molecular machines

2. Methods Cognitive neuroscience Chemistry

Nonlinear dynamics Molecular mechanisms

Gnergons a 3. Principles invoked Synergies

Biological information Biological information

Self-organization Self-organization

Complementarity Complementarity

4. Direction of
generalization

Macro ! micro Micro ! macro

5. Philosophical
generalization

Complementarism
(Ji 1993, 1995)
a Gnergons are discrete units of gnergy, the complementary union of energy and information (Sect.
2.3.2 ) . Gnergons are thought to be necessary and sufficient for all self-organizing, goal-directed
motions in all physical systems including the cell and the human body. Examples of gnergons
include conformons (Chap. 8 ) and IDSs (Chap. 9 )

Complementary nature (Kelso
and Engstrøm 2006)

University-wide audience. During his visit at Rutgers, we had an opportunity to
compare the results of our researches over the past several decades in our respective
fields of specialization and it did not take too long for us to realize that we have
been studying the same forest called the human body albeit from two opposite ends
- Kelso and his coworkers from the macroscopic end of human body movements
and I from the microscopic end of molecular and cell biology. The similarities and
differences between these two approaches and the results obtained are summarized
in Table 15.9 . Evidently, between us, we have covered the whole spectrum of the
science of the human body , from molecules to mind (as Kelso poetically put it over
breakfast one morning). One way to visualize how Kelso's poetic vision might be
realized in material terms is shown in Fig. 15.17 , the essence of which can be stated
as follows:

Mind controls cells; cells control molecules; molecules control energy supply and thereby
cells and mind. (15.23)
Statement 15.23 reminds us of the reciprocal causality or cyclic causality where
A affects B which then affects A back, etc. (Kelso and EngstrØm 2006,
pp. 115,191). We may refer to Statement 15.23 as the “Reciprocal Causality of
Mind and Molecules” (RCMM). It may be significant that the source of control
information and that of free energy are located at the two opposite ends of the
diagram, reflecting the fact that control information originates in the mind and
the energy needed to implement the control instruction can come only from the
chemical reactions catalyzed by enzymes.
Table 15.10 characterizes the three branches of coordination dynamics operating
within the human body in detail and situates the works of Kelso and mine within the
triadic framework of coordination dynamics. As Row 1 indicates, the human body
can be viewed as an excellent example of a renormalizable bionetwork discussed in
Sect. 2.4 . That is, the human body is a network of cells, each of which is a network