Photo: Bison in Sagebrush Steppe, Yellowstone National Park. Copyright 2020 Delena Norris-Tull
The Systems View of Life
“Modern science has come to realize that all scientific theories are approximations to the true nature of reality; and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena… Thus scientists construct a sequence of limited and approximate theories, or ‘models,’ each more accurate than the previous one but none of them representing a complete and final account of natural phenomena” (Capra, p. 101).
“To understand the essence of living systems, scientists - whether in biophysics, biochemistry, or any other discipline concerned with the study of life - will have to abandon the reductionist belief that complex organisms can be described completely, like machines, in terms of the properties and behavior of their constituents. This should be easier to do today than in the 1920s, since the reductionist approach has had to be abandoned even in the study of inorganic matter” (Capra, p. 106-107).
“Understanding the structure and functioning of cells involves a problem that has become characteristic of all modern biology. The organization of a cell has often been compared to that of a factory, where different parts are manufactured at different sites, stored in intermediate facilities, and transported to assembly plants to be combined into finished products that are either used up by the cell itself or exported to other cells. Cell biology has made enormous progress in understanding the structures and functions of many of the cell’s subunits, but it has remained largely ignorant about the coordinating activities that integrate those operations into the functioning of the cell as a whole… Biologists have come to realize that cells are organisms in their own right, and they are becoming increasingly aware that the integrative activities of these living systems - especially the balancing of their interdependent metabolic pathways and cycles - cannot be understood within the reductionist framework” (Capra, p. 109-110).
Capra points out that the reductionist paradigm, at least at the time of publication of his book in 1982, still hampers advancements in the fields of genetics, molecular biology, medicine, and neurobiology. “There is no unifying framework that would enable biologists to overcome the fragmentation of their science by evaluating the relative importance of research problems and recognizing how they interrelate. The only framework used for such an evaluation is still the Cartesian, in which living organisms are seen as physical and biochemical machines, to be explained completely in terms of their molecular mechanisms… What is needed, to solve these problems, is a new paradigm; a new dimension of concepts transcending the Cartesian view. It is likely that the systems view of life will form the conceptual framework of this new biology” (Capra, p. 121-122).
Next Sections:
The Systems View of Life
“Modern science has come to realize that all scientific theories are approximations to the true nature of reality; and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena… Thus scientists construct a sequence of limited and approximate theories, or ‘models,’ each more accurate than the previous one but none of them representing a complete and final account of natural phenomena” (Capra, p. 101).
“To understand the essence of living systems, scientists - whether in biophysics, biochemistry, or any other discipline concerned with the study of life - will have to abandon the reductionist belief that complex organisms can be described completely, like machines, in terms of the properties and behavior of their constituents. This should be easier to do today than in the 1920s, since the reductionist approach has had to be abandoned even in the study of inorganic matter” (Capra, p. 106-107).
“Understanding the structure and functioning of cells involves a problem that has become characteristic of all modern biology. The organization of a cell has often been compared to that of a factory, where different parts are manufactured at different sites, stored in intermediate facilities, and transported to assembly plants to be combined into finished products that are either used up by the cell itself or exported to other cells. Cell biology has made enormous progress in understanding the structures and functions of many of the cell’s subunits, but it has remained largely ignorant about the coordinating activities that integrate those operations into the functioning of the cell as a whole… Biologists have come to realize that cells are organisms in their own right, and they are becoming increasingly aware that the integrative activities of these living systems - especially the balancing of their interdependent metabolic pathways and cycles - cannot be understood within the reductionist framework” (Capra, p. 109-110).
Capra points out that the reductionist paradigm, at least at the time of publication of his book in 1982, still hampers advancements in the fields of genetics, molecular biology, medicine, and neurobiology. “There is no unifying framework that would enable biologists to overcome the fragmentation of their science by evaluating the relative importance of research problems and recognizing how they interrelate. The only framework used for such an evaluation is still the Cartesian, in which living organisms are seen as physical and biochemical machines, to be explained completely in terms of their molecular mechanisms… What is needed, to solve these problems, is a new paradigm; a new dimension of concepts transcending the Cartesian view. It is likely that the systems view of life will form the conceptual framework of this new biology” (Capra, p. 121-122).
Next Sections: