vol 3: Development
chapter 4 Biology
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Biology: Introduction
The ancient view that matter is completely inert makes it easy to distinguish between life from non-life: living things move themselves; non-living thing must be moved by something else. As we have seen already in the chapter on physics, the universe itself, insofar as it has energy, is a self-moving, self creative entity. Physics This is consistent with the idea that the universe is divine, and that god is a living god.
Here the distinction between biology and physics is a question of generality: physics applies throughout spacetime; biology, on the other hand, applies only to special places where conditions are suitable for life as biologists understand it. At present the only life we know of is life on Earth.
In recent years, astronomers have found planets around other stars. Jean Schneider At present the bulk of these planets are uninhabitable. There seems no reason, however, why there should not be other living planets in the universe. It seems likely, however, that any living planets that we do find will be so far away that communication with their inhabitants may not be possible.
What does biology add to physics? Although many are very tiny, living creatures are complex organized structures which act to maintain their own existence and to reproduce themselves. Living things organize the alphabet of physical processes in the universe to create a new layer of complexity. Whereas physics operates everywhere in the universe, life requires special conditions, like those found on Earth, to come into existence.
Life as we know has arisen through evolution. The recursive nature of evolution explains the high complexity of living things. Our modern understanding of evolution, cybernetics and chemistry allows us to appreciate life and ourselves as a natural fit to the inanimate world. By showing that life is a natural outgrowth of non-life, I hope to add weight to the notion that the visible universe is divine.
Each of my cells is a community of molecules. The choreography that makes a few kilograms of stardust into me is recorded in my genome. This text is a natural example of the definition of structure by text. My genome is a point in an unbroken chain of inheritance stretching back billions of generations to some ancient and primitive creature, my ultimate ancestor. We all share a similar heritage.
(revised 4 December 2007)
Further reading
Books
| Aquinas, Thomas, In Aristotelis librum de Anima Commentarium, Marietti 1959 back |
| Bernhardt, Peter, The Rose's Kiss: a Natural History of Flowers, Shearwater Books 1999 Amazon back |
| Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.' (66) Amazon back |
| Dawkins, Richard , The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin/Pelican 1976 Preface: '[Darwinism] is, indeed a remarkably simple theory; ... In essence it amounts simply to the idea that non-random reproduction where there is hereditary variation, has consequences that are far reaching if there is time for them to be cumulative ... ' Amazon back |
| Holldobler, Bert, The Ants, Belknap Press pf Harvard University Press 1990 Amazon back |
| Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Haughton Mifflin 1990 Jacket: 'At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing.' Amazon back |
| Jones, Steve, Almost like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated, Doubleday 1999 An Historical Sketch: 'The Origin of Species is, without doubt, the book of the millennium. ... [This book] is, as far as is possible, an attempt to rewrite the Origin of Species. I use its plan, developing as it does from farms to fossils, from beehives to islands, as a framework, but my own Grand Facts ... are set firmly in the late twentieth century. Almost Like a Whale tries to read Charles Darwin's mind with the benefit of scientific hindsight and to show how the theory of evolution unites biology as his millenium draws to an end.' (xix) Amazon back |
| Kimura , Motoo, The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, Cambridge University Press 1985 Amazon back |
| Lumsden, Charles J, Physical Theory in Biology: Foundations and Explorations, World Scientific 1997 Amazon back |
| Mattheck, C, Design in Nature: Learning from Trees, Springer Verlag 1998 buy Amazon back |
| McKeown, Thomas, The Origins of Human Disease, Basil Blackwell 1988 Jacket: 'This book is a history of the diseases of humankind and their causes from earliest times to the present day. It is a tour de force drawing upon the author's extensive work on the history of infection, as well as on the evidence drawn from archaeology, history and demography.' Amazon back |
| Nichols, Michael, Brutal Kinship, Aperture 1999 Amazon back |
| Saunders, John Bertrand de Cusance Morant, The Anatomical Drawings of Andreas Versalius, Bonanza Books 1982 Amazon back |
| Thomas, Lewis, The Lives of the Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, Penguin, USA 1995 Amazon back |
| Watson, James D, The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA , New American Library 1991 Amazon back |
| Wilson, Edward Osborne, Sociobiology: The new synthesis, Harvard UP 1975 Chapter 1: '... the central theoretical problem of sociobiology: how can altruism, which by definition reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection? The answer is kinship. ... Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. ... It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the Modern Synthesis.' Amazon back |
Papers
| Cole, S T, "Deciphering the Biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the complete genome sequence", Nature, 393, 6685, 11 June 1998, page 537-544. back |
| Curie, C R, "Fungus-growing ants use antibiotic-producing bacteria to control garden parasites", Nature, 398, , 22 April 1999, page 701. back |
| Hairston Jr, Nelson G, "Rapid evolution revealed by dormant eggs", Nature, 401, 6752 , 30 September 1999, page 446. 'Lake Constance, in central Europe experienced a period of eutrophication (the biological effects of an input of plant nutrients) during the 1960s-70s, which caused an increase in the abundance of nutritionally poor or even toxic cyanobacteria. By hatching long dormant eggs of Daphnia galeata found in lake sediments, we show that the mean resistance of Daphnia genotypes to dietary cyanobacteria increased significantly during the eutrophication". back |
| Krebs, John R, "The second Silent Spring", Nature, 400, 6745, 12 August 1999, page 611-612. back |
| Madsen, Thomas, "Restoration of an inbred adder population", Nature, 402, 6757, 4 November 1999, page 34-35. back |
| Smil, Vaclav, "Detonator of the population explosion", Nature, 400, 6743, 29 July 1999, page 415. 'Without ammonia there would be no inorganic fertilizers, and nearly half the world would go hungry. Of all the century's technological marvels, the Haber-Bosch process has made the most difference to our survival'. back |
Links
| Bielefeld University Biological Cybernetics / Theoretical Biology back |
| CSIRO CSIRO/Entomology Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia back |
| New Scientist New Scientist Planet Science back |
| Society for Developmental Biology Virtual Library: Developmental Biology back |
| US Government U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) back |
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