Entwurf einer organismischen Systembiologie

Entwurf einer organismischen Systembiologie

Bernd Rosslenbroich, Peter Heusser
Jahrbuch für Goetheanismus 2010, 2010, P.7-40 | DOI: 10.18756/jfg.2010.7
evolution | Language: German | €6
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Abstract:

Sketch of an organismic systems biology

Biology has been dominated for a long time by two contrasting explanations and research approaches: reductionism and holism. This article shows that both views are one-sided and that a new synthesis can be developed. We develop a fundamental concept of the organism starting from the earlier suggestions of Paul Alfred Weiss and Susan Oyama. According to our concept, an organism comprises several system levels which independently interact with one another. Each of its layers has its own system properties which cannot be reduced to other layers, nor be deduced from them. This means, for example, that a cell, an organ or the whole organism has an autonomy which, even though it needs each of the subordinate components, is not determined by them. This also means that genes are just one component in this complex and cannot be regarded as the controlling entity of the organism. It therefore questions the currently widespread genetic determinism. The system layers are simultaneously, correlatively interdependent, and, although it is justifiable to resolve them methodically into individual causal relations, this does not lead to a satisfactory overall concept of the organism. Ontogenesis results from constant interaction between the system layers involved, and thus creates a supramolecular order. Genetic, epigenetic and supramolecular information are parts of the total information which leads to the spatial and temporal creation of form. This approach differs fundamentally from the system theory that is currently promoted in molecular biology. Therefore it is provisionally named ‘organismic system biology’. It is a contribution towards overcoming the atomistic view according to which the human being is a sum of its molecular parts. We argue that it is possible to develop on this basis a ‘new biology for a new century’, as Carl Woese put it. It is a contribution to the foundation of Goethean research that aims to comprehend the formative processes of organisms in their structural and temporal autonomy.

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