Laws of biology?

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daisyMany people are familiar with Newton’s Laws of Motion and, perhaps aware of the existence of the laws of thermodynamics. These are fundamental laws of physics upon which much of our engineered world is built. But, are there corresponding fundamental laws of biology? The question is important because we need to understand the interaction of engineered products and services with the biological world (including us) because, as John Caputo has suggested, a post-humanist world is coming into existence as the boundary between humans and technology is eroded.

So, back to laws of biology.  It is challenging to identify predictive statements about the biological world that are generally applicable. Elliott Sober argued that there are no exceptionless laws in biology. However, others would point to Dollo’s law that states evolution is irreversible, which sounds like a form of the second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases in all real processes. Indeed, McShea and Brandon have written a book entitled ‘Biology’s First Law: the tendency for diversity and complexity to increase in evolutionary systems’ which sounds even more like the second law of thermodynamics.

There are other candidates such as the Hardy-Weinberg law that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences; maybe this is corollary of Dollo’s law?   Or, the Michaelis-Menten rate law that governs enzymatic reactions. But, are there any biological laws that are sufficiently general to apply beyond the context of life on Earth?  Answers via comments, please!

Sources:

Caputo JD. Truth: philosophy in transit. London: Penguin, 2013.

Sober, E., Philosophy of biology, Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Sober, E., Philosophy in biology, in the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd edition, edited by Nicholas Bunnin & E.P. Tsui-James, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2006.

McShea, D.W. & Brandon, R., Biology’s first law: the tendency for diversity and complexity to increase in evolutionary systems, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.

Converting wealth into knowledge and back to wealth

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Some months ago I was invited to give the opening lecture at a workshop in China on connecting science and business in the field of experimental mechanics. ‘Connecting science and business’ was the sub-title of a book I wrote with Bob Handscombe some years ago and ‘experimental mechanics’ is a theme that runs deep through my research. So, I felt honored to be invited and confident that I had something relevant to say. However, probably the most succinct statement at the workshop was made by Professor Jian Lu from City University of Hong Kong quoting Geoffrey Nicholson, the inventor of Post-Its: ‘Research is the transformation of money into knowledge. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge back into money creating value.’

The central role that money plays in life is acknowledged in the saying ‘money makes the world go around’. However, the intertwining of money and knowledge is less widely recognised. Although we talk about a knowledge economy not many people understand what it means or how it functions. The diagram below is an attempt to show how research leads to the creation of private information which needs to be disseminated in order to become public information. Public information becomes public knowledge when it is incorporated into our structured, shared understanding through study and learning. Public knowledge is used in innovation processes to create new technology and wealth, which fuels further research, so that there is a feedback loop.  The diagram is modified from one by Max Tegmark‘s book ‘Our Mathematical Universe‘ and, of course is simplified, perhaps too much, but nevertheless illustrates the process of knowledge creation even if sometimes the whole process functions inside an organisation. In the later situation, the creation of knowledge and the benefits to society are likely to be impeded, at least temporarily.

Information triangle

Information triangle

From Russell to Schrodinger on thinking contradictions

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galleyhead lighthouse‘People would rather die than think and most people do’ is a witticism attributed to Bertrand Russell. If this is true then the prospects are poor for the societal conversation on the morality of organizations that I suggested a few months ago, since it requires people to think for themselves. Socrates ran into trouble when he advocated such an approach; so, perhaps I should be careful about what I suggest and return to the silent majority. Now I have contradicted myself, but as Erwin Schrödinger wrote ‘If a man never contradicts himself, the reason must be that he virtually never says anything at all’. I am sure that I have contradicted myself many times in my posts over the last year but you continue to read this blog in increasing numbers [up by 50% compared to 2014]. Thank you for your support during 2015.

Happy New Year!

Slow down, breathe your own air

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flytrapFor many of us the pace of life will have accelerated to a fever pitch as the holiday season approached and we tried to complete time-sensitive tasks while being deluged with emails, messages, images, reports and demands for a slice of our time. Fredrik Sjoberg in his delightful book, ‘The Fly Trap‘ suggests that ‘if you think the torrent goes too fast, then in nine out of ten cases you can turn it off or just close your eyes and breathe your own air for a while.’ Nile crocodiles have a life expectancy of 100 years which some have attributed to their ability to slow their metabolism. ‘Unfussed, they can reduce their heart rate to about three beats a minute’ according to Peter Hughes. So in this holiday season: switch off, close your eyes, go mind-wandering (see my post entitled ‘Mind wandering‘ on September 3rd, 2014) and you are likely to live longer and have time for everything.

Happy holidays!

Sources:

Fredrik Sjoberg, The Fly Trap, Penguin Books, 2015

Peter Hughes, ‘Gently does it’, Financial Times Weekend, 17/18 October 2015