This article was first posted in http://blog.sciencenet.cn/u/AlecXu
I believe that everyone who once has studied biology, no matter what branches of biology, is overwhelmed by exhaustive details of complex pattern of interacting entities. There is no theory in biology in traditional biology textbooks, but only details of collections of phenomena!
With an engineering and physics trained mind, I hardly find it captivating to continue the paths of thoughts that biologists have paved ahead of us. In my views, the current reductionist view points held by the majority of biologists are way-off-track. However, it doesn’t mean that as contemplating the complex world I would argue reductionist view shall be completely abandoned. On the contrary of pealing away reductionist view point entirely, I am strongly convinced that reductionism operating on the integrated complex system will eventually thrive and prosper in the competition to possess the ultimate explaining and predictive power for biology as well as such problem as the origin of life.
I have long been influenced by Konrad Kauffman (who advocates second law of thermodynamics as what he calls “the law before law” and is deeply convinced by the explaining power of it, viewed as a “crazy” physicist by many scientists, and who I knew from the well-known Niels Bohr Institute) and started to hold the view that the non-equilibrium thermodynamics which explains spontaneous order formation together with Darwin’s selection principle is the best candidate to be the ultimate and unified theory of biology. On occasions, I discussed about pieces of my views with my colleague, Yang Yang and my girlfriend. Most fortunately, I recently got to know the book “The origins of order: self organization and selection in evolution” published in 1993 and written by prominent theoretical biologist Stuart Alan Kauffman who holds the same view but of course has more original and more-organized or systematic thoughts.
I have just started to read Stuart A. Kauffman’s book and therefore I will leave my detailed and more comprehensive comments to his thoughts and the book once I finish my reading. However, so far, from my very first impression, I can say it is a very thick book. Personally, I find his way of articulation and presentation of thoughts over-abundant. Anyway, I stop by here and leave my words to later updates on this topic. I welcome anyone interested in searching for a theory of biology join my reading experience.
