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Epilogue Quantumstuff and Biostuff a View of Patterns of Convergence in Contemporary Science 1 Epilogue Quantumstuff and Biostuff A View of Patterns of Convergence in Contemporary Science 1 F. Eugene Yates ABSTRACT The achievements of science in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries depended on a shift in emphasis from: (I) the general to the particular with the emergence of specialties; (2) pure rationality to empir­ ical tests of causality; (3) man the actor within nature to the scientist as objective spectator. In the 20th century these trends have reversed. Specialties are giving way to convergence of methods and concepts. But the gulf between physics and biology remains wide: While physics continues to draw great strength from mathematics, biology works within the framework of natural language and remains intractable to useful mathematization. In this summary I examine the effectiveness of math­ ematics in natural science and consider what might be done to reduce biology to physics, in the light of earlier efforts by Bohr and Delbrtick. Physical DNA, cell receptors, the development of an embryo, and evolution of life and the Cosmos are examined as four arenas for the possible convergence of biology and physics. I suggest that the gulf between these two sciences is actually that between an informational view and a dynamical view ofform and process. Criteria for the characterization of any artificial, man-made system as "living" are examined, and Monod's behavioral (dynamic) criteria are contrasted with von Neumann's (informational) requirements for a self-reproducing automaton. A new thought-collective is now self-organizing and attracting physicists, topologists and biologists to the problem of the self-organization of complex systems. I find in that new collective the hope for ultimate convergence of the sciences. In 1611 John Donne's poem "An Anatomie of the World" complained of the collapse of the established astrocosmological images handed down from Aristotle, Dante ... ISubtitle based on M. Gell-Mann's keynote address at the 1985 meeting ofthe American Association for the Advancement of Science, Los Angeles. F. EUGENE YATES • Crump Institute for Medical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024. 617 618 Epilogue And new Philosophy cans all in doubt, The Element of fire is quite put out; The Sun,is lost, and th' earth, and no mans wit Can well direct him where to looke for it. And freely men confesse that this world's spent, When in the Planets, and the Firmament They seeke so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies. 'Tis all in peeces, all cohaerance gone ... The dismantlers of "cohaerance" were Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. New­ ton's Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis, which completed the job, had not yet appeared. Stephen Toulmin, beginning with Donne's lament, has explored the trends of modern physical science during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and identified surprising reversals in the emergence of 20th century postmodern science (relativity and quantum mechanics). I have based this intro­ duction on his chapter "All Cohaerance Gone" (1982, pp. 217-274). In the 17th century the unity of the astronomical order (cosmos) and the human social order (polis) as envisioned by Plato in The Republic and later sub­ sumed by the Stoics as "cosmopolis", gave way to the dualisms separating Mind from Matter, Rationality from Causality, and Humanity from Nature. Under these new conditions science flourished, chiefly because of two shifts: that from interest in the general to the particular; and that from a stance within nature to the posture of the objective spectator, outside the phenomenon being studied. Aristotle had proposed a general theory of motion and change "in all things", but it proved sterile when compared to results of empirical studies of the particular motions of planets, or vibrating strings, or of changes among selected chemical reactants or reproducing organisms. The experimental method and scientific spe­ cialties were born and the machine became the reductionistic, root metaphor underlying scientific progress (Pepper, 1942). Deterministic causal mechanism, as championed by Newton, Descartes and Laplace, was the ideal. These shifts proved so explosively productive that it is with some amazement that we regard the condition of postmodern physics today: The objective spectator is dead (Toulmin, 1982). Strict causal determinism has been abandoned (Pagels, 1982; Herbert, 1985). Empirical data cannot, even in principle, test all predictions of the latest theories (Lowenstein, 1985). Specialties are disappearing into each other (Gell-Mann, 1985). Patterns of Convergence in Contemporary Science The overlapping and merging ofthe specialties is a striking trend of contem­ porary science illuminated by Gell-Mann in his keynote address at the 1985 meet­ ing of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Gell-Mann, 1985). As cosmology merges with elementary particle physics and they both draw upon pure mathematics for their discoveries, we see also growing similarities in studies of biochemistry, biological ultrastructure, genetics, immunology, endocri- Quantumstuff and Biostuff 619 nology, neurotransmission, growth, development, reproduction, repair, adapta­ tion, aging, and cell-cell interactions and motions of all kinds. The older biolog­ ical specialties have become quaint; scientists who would have formerly worked in Departments of Physiology, Bacteriology, or Anatomy have joined Institutes of Molecular Biology. Nevertheless, there is more than one style of scientific inquiry and the differ­ ent specialties have developed different ways of arranging and acquiring knowl­ edge (Collins, 1975; Whitley, 1985). Surely no one can dispute that the sciences are organized differently with respect to both the relative importance of theory versus empirical fact and the manner in which they obtain financial resources for their work. Furthermore, the different branches of science study different things: All real features of the world can be studied directly on their own terms. They do not have to be approached indirectly, by finding their mirror images in a pattern studied by physicists ... The scientific temper is one that looks for the appropriate method in each field, that carefully distinguishes different sorts of questions for differing treatment. To become obsessed with a method for its own sake and to try to use it where it is unsuitable is thoroughly unscientific (Midgley, 1978). But in both physics and biology the Assumption of Simplicity continues to hold strong. Their mutual slogan is: Surface complexity arises from deep simplicity. There is a scientific problem even more fundamental than the origin ofthe universe. We want to know the origin of the rules that have governed the universe and everything in it. Physicists, or at least some of us, believe that there is a simple set oflaws of nature, of which all our complicated present physical and chemical laws are just mathematical consequences. We do not know these underlying laws, but, as an act offaith if you like, we expect that eventually we will ... (Weinberg, 1985) (I hope there is also always room for the opposite view-that surface simplicity arises from deep complexity through the action of constraints.) Trends in Physics One modern view of a truth in physics has been aptly described by Misner (1977): I think physics has a model for immutable truth. A truth that we do not expect is ever going to change. A truth that represents a permanent and final grasp of some limited aspects of nature. Most people would say that is incompatible with the expectation that our theories will be falsified. I adhere to the expectation that our theories will be falsified, and look for the immutable truth only in those theories that have already been falsified, that is, in what I would call mythical theories. Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, Maxwell's equations, the SchrOdinger-equation theory of atomic structure, and the like. Every one of these theories remains in constant everyday use in spite of the fact that it is known to be false in certain applications. In some cases, its concepts have been utterly discarded or eliminated in more refined theories which we believe to be more correct. Nevertheless, I think these theories adequately grasp certain aspects of nature. For instance, I expect geometrical optics will continue to be used by people who use hand lenses, align binoculars, and so forth. It is much easier to think of a light ray as moving in a straight line for certain specific applications than to try to operate in that context 620 Epilogue with the wave theory oflight. For these applications the quantum electrodynamical, field operator theory oflight would simply not clarify one's grasp of the relevant physics but only becloud it with so many complications that one would be unable to focus on those aspects of reality that could be helpful guides to action ... I believe that once a theory has been falsified and its limits are known, it is a better theory. It is a theory whose truth is more clearly defined and in that sense more true .... In some well-known theories of physics, such as Schrodinger-equation atomic structure, we have an important insight that will continue in use even after better theories (quan­ tum electrodynamics) are in their turn falsified. Physicists expect to continue teaching the old, immutable, infallible myths of Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and Maxwell's equations while searching for failings in the theories that have supplanted these.
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