Philosophy of Systems Biology by Sara Green

Author:Sara Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

12.2 How Do You View the Relation Between Philosophy and Systems Biology, and (How) Can These Fields Inform Each Other?

According to Wikipedia “Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with … existence and knowledge…, addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.” There are several ways in which the systems biology approach relates to philosophy in accordance with the definition.

Systems biology attempts to apply the rules of physics and mathematics to achieve a rational understanding of biological phenomena. Biology traditionally is a descriptive science, rather than an exact or mechanistic science. Even molecular biology is generally descriptive in nature. For instance, genetic, molecular as well as cell biological studies over four decades produced a list of components of the central cell cycle machinery. In a number of ways such research also generated information about the relative or absolute numbers of the components, which molecules interact with, or how and when they influence amount or activity of other components of the system. Traditionally, these diverse pieces of information have then been interpreted by scientists on the basis of what has been learned previously about other, similar (sub)systems, the molecules and the principle reactions. In other words, the mechanistic explanations of how the cell cycle (in this example) operates were based on what was found plausible or intuitively acceptable on the basis of the available information and the knowledge and experience of the scientists studying the system. This approach of hypothesis generation (or, eventually, generation of widely accepted facts or knowledge) allowed incorporation of incomplete evidence with a similar weight as strong evidence as well as the substitution of a lack of information with intuition. Most importantly, the illustrations of networks or pathways in text books and papers imply how the system might operate over time, although commonly only very limited data on a system’s dynamics exist. Hence, much of what we believe to “know” about the dynamic operation of molecular systems, such as the cell cycle machinery, is based on interpretation or interpolation rather than on exact experimental evidence or the rules of physics and chemistry. Obviously, molecular processes within a cell must comply with those fundamental natural rules. Therefore, employing mathematical models to describe systems, static or dynamic, and basing those models on the rules of physics and chemistry is an attempt to convert biology from a descriptive to an exact science that mechanistically explains the operation of biological systems. Consequently, systems biology has the potential for a paradigm shift in biological sciences, moving from description to mechanistic explanation.

Systems biology attempts to rationalize a system and identify missing components or connections. A mathematical model of a system, such as the cell cycle machinery, is an attempt to rationalize the known pieces of information and connect those pieces of information by employing the rules of physics and chemistry. Commonly, the first modelling attempt is very highly influenced by human interpretation and intuition (see also a discussion about abstraction below).

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