Theoretical principles for biology: Organization.

In the search of a theory of biological organisms, we propose to adopt organization as a theoretical principle. Organization constitutes an overarching hypothesis that frames the intelligibility of biological objects, by characterizing their relevant aspects. After a succinct historical survey on the understanding of organization in the organicist tradition, we offer a specific characterization in terms of closure of constraints. We then discuss some implications of the adoption of organization as a principle and, in particular, we focus on how it fosters an original approach to biological stability, as well as and its interplay with variation.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

• Publication date

  2016-10-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Philosophy

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2016.07.005PMID 27521451
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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