Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.10
The
liformation-mattergy
complementarity and its
predicted uncertainty
principles. The symbol
g
indicates the biological
counterpart of the Plank
constant whose characteristics
are yet to be characterization
g
Information (I)
Energy (E)
Life (L)
1. Liformation
-
2. Structure
3. Cell biology
4. Holism
(A)
Matter (M)
-
1. Mattergy
2. Function
3. Molecular biology
4. Reductionism
(B)
Table 2.11
Another version
of the liformation-mattergy
complementarity and its
predicted uncertainty
principles. The symbol
g
indicates the biological
counterpart of the Plank
constant whose identity
is yet to be characterized
g
Life (L)
Matter (m)
Information (I)
1.
Liformation
-
2. Function
3. Cell biology
4. Holism
(
A
)
1.
Mattergy
2. Structure
3. Molecular biology
4. Reductionism
(
B
)
Energy (E)
-
Heisenberg later agreed with Bohr (Murdoch 1987, p. 51) that his uncertainty
principle is a natural consequence of the wave-particle duality of light and the
peculiarity of the measuring apparatus or the consequence of
the kinematic-dynamic
complementarity
(Murdoch 1987, pp. 58-61).
Since the applicability of the
wave-particle pair
and the
liformation-mattergy pair
are symmetric with respect to the
complementarity principle
(see Statement 2.35, and
Tables
2.5
and
2.6
), we may be justified to construct two possible tables, each
analogous to Table
2.9
, that can be associated with the
liformation-mattergy
comple-
mentarity (see Tables
2.10
and
2.11
). Of these two choices, Table
2.11
may be
preferred because of its greater similarity to Table
2.9
with respect to the position of E.
New complementary pairs appear in Table
2.11
,i.e.,
liformation-mattergy, struc-
ture vs. function, cell biology vs. molecular biology,
and
holism vs. reductionism
.Ifthe
content of Table
2.11
is valid, it may be concluded that the structure-function
dichotomy widely discussed in biology belongs to the same logical class as the
kinematics-dynamics dichotomy in physics (compare Tables
2.8
and
2.10
). If this
conjecture is correct, the following generalization may be made:
Just as the
kinematics
(i.e., the position-time coordination) and
dynamics
(i.e., energy-
momentum changes or causality) of moving objects cannot be measured simultaneously in
physics with arbitrary accuracy so it is impossible to measure the
structure
and
function
of
an organism simultaneously.
(2.44)
