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Robert Rosen (biologist)

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Robert Rosen
Born(1934-06-27)June 27, 1934
Brooklyn,New York,US
DiedDecember 28, 1998(1998-12-28)(aged 64)
Rochester, New York,US
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Scientific career
FieldsMathematical biology,Quantum genetics,Biophysics
InstitutionsState University of New York at Buffalo
Dalhousie University
Academic advisorsNicolas Rashevsky
Notes

Robert Rosen(June 27, 1934 – December 28, 1998) was an American theoreticalbiologistand Professor ofBiophysicsatDalhousie University.[1]

Career[edit]

Rosen was born on June 27, 1934, inBrownsville(a section ofBrooklyn), inNew York City.He studied biology, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and history; particularly, the history of science. In 1959 he obtained a PhD in relational biology, a specialization within the broader field ofMathematical Biology,under the guidance of ProfessorNicolas Rashevskyat theUniversity of Chicago.He remained at the University of Chicago until 1964,[2]later moving to the University of Buffalo — now part of theState University of New York(SUNY) — atBuffaloon a full associate professorship, while holding a joint appointment at the Center for Theoretical Biology.

His year-long sabbatical in 1970 as a visiting fellow at Robert Hutchins'Center for the Study of Democratic InstitutionsinSanta Barbara,California was seminal, leading to the conception and development of what he later calledAnticipatory SystemsTheory, itself a corollary of his larger theoretical work on relational complexity. In 1975, he left SUNY at Buffalo and accepted a position atDalhousie University,inHalifax,Nova Scotia,as a Killam Research Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, where he remained until he took early retirement in 1994.[3]He is survived by his wife, a daughter, Judith Rosen, and two sons.

He served as president of theSociety for General Systems Research,now known as the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), in 1980-81.

Research[edit]

Rosen's research was concerned with the most fundamental aspects of biology, specifically the questions "What is life?" and "Why are living organisms alive?". A few of the major themes in his work were:

  • developing a specific definition ofcomplexitybased oncategory theoreticmodels of autonomous living organisms
  • developingComplex Systems Biologyfrom the point of view of Relational Biology as well as Quantum Genetics
  • developing a rigorous theoretical foundation for living organisms as "anticipatory systems"

Rosen believed that the contemporary model of physics - which he showed to be based on aCartesianandNewtonianformalism suitable for describing a world of mechanisms - was inadequate to explain or describe the behavior of biological systems. Rosen argued that the fundamental question "What is life?"cannot be adequately addressed from within a scientific foundation that isreductionistic.Approaching organisms with reductionistic scientific methods and practices sacrifices the functional organization of living systems in order to study the parts. The whole, according to Rosen, could not be recaptured once the biologicalorganizationhad been destroyed. By proposing a sound theoretical foundation for studying biological organisation, Rosen held that, rather than biology being a mere subset of the already known physics, it might turn out to provide profound lessons for physics, and also for science in general.[4]

Rosen's work combines sophisticated mathematics with potentially radical new views on the nature of living systems and science. He has been called "biology's Newton."[5]Drawing on set theory, his work has also been considered controversial, raising concerns that some of the mathematical methods he used could lack adequate proof. Rosen's posthumous workEssays on Life Itself(2000) as well as recent monographs[6][7]by Rosen's student Aloisius Louie have clarified and explained the mathematical content of Rosen's work.

Relational biology[edit]

Rosen's work proposed a methodology which needs to be developed in addition to the current reductionistic approaches to science bymolecular biologists.He called this methodologyRelational Biology.Relationalis a term he correctly attributes to his mentorNicolas Rashevsky,who published several papers on the importance of set-theoretical relations[8]in biology prior to Rosen's first reports on this subject. Rosen's relational approach to Biology is an extension and amplification of Nicolas Rashevsky's treatment ofn-ary relations in, and among, organismic sets that he developed over two decades as a representation of both biological and social "organisms".

Rosen's relational biology maintains that organisms, and indeed all systems, have a distinct quality calledorganizationwhich is not part of the language of reductionism, as for example inmolecular biology,although it is increasingly employed insystems biology.It has to do with more than purely structural or material aspects. For example, organization includes all relations between material parts, relations between the effects of interactions of the material parts, and relations with time and environment, to name a few. Many people sum up this aspect ofcomplex systems[9]by saying thatthe whole is more than the sum of the parts.Relations between parts and between the effects of interactions must be considered as additional 'relational' parts, in some sense.

Rosen said thatorganizationmust be independent from the material particles which seemingly constitute aliving system.As he put it:

The human body completely changes the matter it is made of roughly every 8 weeks, throughmetabolism,replication and repair. Yet, you're still you --with all your memories, your personality... If science insists on chasing particles, they will follow them right through anorganismand miss the organism entirely.

— Robert Rosen, as told to his daughter, Ms. Judith Rosen[2]

Rosen's abstract relational biology approach focuses on a definition of living organisms, and allcomplex systems,in terms of their internalorganizationasopen systemsthat cannot be reduced to their interacting components because of the multiple relations between metabolic, replication and repair components that govern the organism's complex biodynamics.

He deliberately chose the `simplest'graphsand categories for his representations of Metabolism-Repair Systems in small categories of sets endowed only with the discrete "efficient" topology of sets, envisaging this choice as the most general and less restrictive. It turns out however that the efficient entailments ofsystems are "closed to efficient cause",[10]or in simple terms the catalysts ( "efficient causes" of metabolism, usually identified as enzymes) are themselves products of metabolism, and thus may not be considered, in a strict mathematical sense, as subcategories of thecategoryof sequential machines orautomata:in direct contradiction of the French philosopherDescartes' supposition that all animals are only elaborate machines ormechanisms.Rosen stated: "I argue that the only resolution to such problems[of the subject-object boundary and what constitutes objectivity]is in the recognition that closed loops of causation are 'objective'; i.e. legitimate objects of scientific scrutiny. These are explicitly forbidden in any machine or mechanism."[11]Rosen's demonstration of "efficient closure" was to present this clear paradox in mechanistic science, that on the one hand organisms are defined by such causal closures and on the other hand mechanism forbids them; thus we need to revise our understanding of nature. The mechanistic view prevails even today in most of general biology, and most of science, although some claim no longer insociologyandpsychologywhere reductionist approaches have failed and fallen out of favour since the early 1970s. However those fields have yet to reach consensus on what the new view should be, as is also the case in most other disciplines, which struggle to retain various aspects of "the machine metaphor" for living and complex systems.

Complexity and complex scientific models: (M,R) systems[edit]

The clarification of the distinction between simple andcomplex scientific modelsbecame in later years a major goal of Rosen's published reports. Rosen maintained that modeling is at the very essence of science and thought. His bookAnticipatory Systems[12]describes, in detail, what he termed themodeling relation.He showed the deep differences between a true modeling relation and asimulation,the latter not based on such a modeling relation.

Inmathematical biologyhe is known as the originator of a class of relational models of livingorganisms,calledsystems, that he devised to capture the minimal capabilities that a materialsystemwould need in order to be one of the simplestfunctional organismsthat are commonly said to be "alive". In this kind of system,stands for the metabolic andstands for the 'repair' subsystems of a simple organism, for example active 'repair' RNA molecules. Thus, his mode for determining or "defining" life in any given system is a functional, not material, mode; although he did consider in his 1970s published reports specificdynamic realizationsof the simplestsystems in terms of enzymes (),RNA(), and functional, duplicatingDNA(his-mapping).

He went, however, even further in this direction by claiming that when studying acomplex system,one"can throw away the matter and study the organization"to learn those things that are essential to defining in general an entire class of systems. This has been, however, taken too literally by a few of his former students who have not completely assimilated Robert Rosen's injunction of the need for a theory ofdynamic realizationsof such abstract components in specific molecular form in order to close the modeling loop[clarification needed]for the simplest functional organisms (such as, for example, single-cell algae ormicroorganisms).[13]He supported this claim (that he actually attributed toNicolas Rashevsky) based on the fact that living organisms are a class of systems with an extremely wide range of material "ingredients", different structures, different habitats, different modes of living andreproduction,and yet we are somehow able to recognize them all asliving,or functional organisms, without being howevervitalists.

His approach, just like Rashevsky's latest theories of organismic sets,[14][15]emphasizesbiological organizationovermolecular structurein an attempt to bypass thestructure-functionality relationshipsthat are important to all experimental biologists, includingphysiologists.In contrast, a study of the specific material details of any given organism, or even of a type of organisms, will only tell us about how that type of organism "does it". Such a study doesn't approach what is common to all functional organisms, i.e. "life". Relational approaches to theoretical biology would therefore allow us to study organisms in ways that preserve those essential qualities that we are trying to learn about, and that are common only tofunctionalorganisms.

Robert Rosen's approach belongs conceptually to what is now known asFunctional Biology,as well asComplex Systems Biology,albeitin a highly abstract, mathematical form.

Quantum Biochemistry and Quantum Genetics[edit]

Rosen also questioned what he believed to be many aspects of mainstream interpretations ofbiochemistryandgenetics.He objects to the idea that functional aspects in biological systems can be investigated via a material focus. One example: Rosen disputes that the functional capability of a biologically activeproteincan be investigated purely using the genetically encoded sequence ofamino acids.This is because, he said, a protein must undergo a process of folding to attain its characteristic three-dimensional shape before it can become functionally active in the system. Yet, only theamino acid sequenceis genetically coded. The mechanisms by which proteins fold are not completely known. He concluded, based on examples such as this, thatphenotypecannot always be directly attributed togenotypeand that the chemically active aspect of a biologically active protein relies on more than the sequence of amino acids, from which it was constructed: there must be some other important factors at work, that he did not however attempt to specify or pin down.

Certain questions about Rosen's mathematical arguments were raised in a paper authored by Christopher Landauer and Kirstie L. Bellman[16]which claimed that some of the mathematical formulations used by Rosen are problematic from a logical viewpoint. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that such issues were also raised long time ago byBertrand RussellandAlfred North Whiteheadin their famousPrincipia Mathematicain relation toantinomiesofset theory.As Rosen's mathematical formulation in his earlier papers was also based onset theoryand thecategory of setssuch issues have naturally re-surfaced. However, these issues have now been addressed by Robert Rosen in his recent bookEssays on Life Itself,published posthumously in 2000. Furthermore, such basic problems of mathematical formulations of--systems had already been resolved by other authors as early as 1973 by utilizing theYoneda lemmaincategory theory,and the associatedfunctorialconstruction in categories with (mathematical) structure.[17][18]Such generalcategory-theoreticextensions of-systems that avoidset theory paradoxesare based onWilliam Lawvere's categorical approach and its extensions tohigher-dimensional algebra.The mathematical and logical extension ofmetabolic-replication systemsto generalized-systems, orG-MR,also involved a series of acknowledged letters exchanged between Robert Rosen and the latter authors during 1967—1980s, as well as letters exchanged with Nicolas Rashevsky up to 1972.

Rosen's ideas are becoming increasingly accepted in theoretical biology, and there are several current discussions.[19][20][21][22]One of his main results, as explained in his bookLife Itself(1991), was the unexpected conclusion that (M,R) systems cannot be simulated byTuring machines.

Erwin Schrödingerdiscussed issues of quantum genetics in his famous book of 1945,What Is Life?These were critically discussed by Rosen inLife Itselfand in his subsequent bookEssays on Life Itself.[23]

Comparison with other theories of life[edit]

(M,R) systems constitute just one of several current theories of life, including thechemoton[24]ofTibor Gánti,thehypercycleofManfred EigenandPeter Schuster,[25][26] [27]autopoiesis(orself-building)[28]ofHumberto MaturanaandFrancisco Varela,and theautocatalytic sets[29]ofStuart Kauffman,similar to an earlier proposal byFreeman Dyson.[30] All of these (including (M,R) systems) found their original inspiration in Erwin Schrödinger's bookWhat is Life?[31]but at first they appear to have little in common with one another, largely because the authors did not communicate with one another, and none of them made any reference in their principal publications to any of the other theories. Nonetheless, there are more similarities than may be obvious at first sight, for example between Gánti and Rosen.[32]Until recently[33][34][22]there have been almost no attempts to compare the different theories and discuss them together.

Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)[edit]

Some authors equate models of the origin of life with LUCA, theLastUniversalCommonAncestorof all extant life.[35]This is a serious error resulting from failure to recognize thatLrefers to thelastcommon ancestor, not to thefirstancestor, which is much older: a large amount of evolution occurred before the appearance of LUCA.[36]

Gill and Forterre expressed the essential point as follows:[37]

LUCA should not be confused with the first cell, but was the product of a long period of evolution. Being the "last" means that LUCA was preceded by a long succession of older "ancestors."

Publications[edit]

Rosen wrote several books and many articles. A selection of his published books is as follows:

  • 1970,Dynamical Systems Theory in BiologyNew York: Wiley Interscience.
  • 1970,Optimality Principles,reissued by Springer in 2013[38]
  • 1978,Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems,Elsevier Science Ltd,
  • 1985,Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations.Pergamon Press.
  • 1991,Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life,Columbia University Press

Published posthumously:

References[edit]

  1. ^Rosen, Robert (March 2006). "Autobiographical Reminiscences of Robert Rosen".Axiomathes.16(1–2): 1–23.doi:10.1007/s10516-006-0001-6.S2CID122095161.Complex Systems Biology and Life's Logic in memory of Robert Rosen
  2. ^ab"Autobiographical Reminiscences of Robert Rosen".
  3. ^"In Memory of Dr. Robert Rosen".February 1999. Archived fromthe originalon February 1, 2010.RetrievedNovember 14,2013.
  4. ^"Robert Rosen -- Complexity & Life".Archived from the original on March 15, 2008.RetrievedSeptember 12,2007.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. ^Mikulecky, Donald C (July 2001). "Robert Rosen (1934–1998): a snapshot of biology's Newton".Computers & Chemistry.25(4): 317–327.doi:10.1016/S0097-8485(01)00079-1.PMID11459348.
  6. ^Louie, A.H. (2009).More than life itself: a synthetic continuation in relational biology.Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.ISBN978-3868380446.
  7. ^Louie, A. H. (2013).Reflection of life: functional entailment and imminence in relational biology.New York, NY: Springer-Verlag New York Inc.ISBN978-1-4614-6927-8.
  8. ^"Jon AwbreyRelation theory(the logical approach to relation theory) ".Archived fromthe originalon May 27, 2010.RetrievedJanuary 31,2010.
  9. ^Baianu, I. C. (March 2006). "Robert Rosen's Work and Complex Systems Biology".Axiomathes.16(1–2): 25–34.doi:10.1007/s10516-005-4204-z.S2CID4673166.Complex Systems Biology and Life's Logic in memory of Robert Rosen
  10. ^Donald C. Mikulecky Robert Rosen: The well posed question and its answer - Why are organisms different from machines?
  11. ^Rosen, Robert (June 1, 1993). "Drawing the boundary between subject and object: Comments on the mind-brain problem".Theoretical Medicine.14(2): 89–100.doi:10.1007/BF00997269.ISSN1573-1200.PMID8236065.S2CID24953932.
  12. ^Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical, and Methodological Foundations,Robert Rosen, 2nd edition, with contributions by Judith Rosen, John J. Klineman and Mihai Nadin, 2012, lx + 472 pp., Springer, New YorkISBN978-1-4614-1268-7
  13. ^Robert Rosen. 1970.Dynamical Systems Theory in Biology,New York: Wiley Interscience.
  14. ^Rashevsky, N (1965). "The Representation of Organisms in Terms of (logical) Predicates".Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics.27(4): 477–491.doi:10.1007/bf02476851.PMID4160663.
  15. ^Rashevsky, N (1969). "Outline of a Unified Approach to Physics, Biology and Sociology".Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics.31(1): 159–198.doi:10.1007/bf02478215.PMID5779774.
  16. ^Landauer, C; Bellman, KL (2002). "Theoretical biology: Organisms and mechanisms".AIP Conference Proceedings.627:59–70.Bibcode:2002AIPC..627...59L.doi:10.1063/1.1503669.
  17. ^I.C. Baianu: 1973, Some Algebraic Properties of- Systems.Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics35,213-217.
  18. ^I.C. Baianu and M. Marinescu: 1974, A Functorial Construction of- Systems.Revue Roumaine de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées19:388-391.
  19. ^Wolkenhauer, P; Hofmeyr, J-HS (2007). "An abstract cell model that describes the self-organization of cell function in living systems".Journal of Theoretical Biology.246(3): 461–476.Bibcode:2007JThBi.246..461W.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2007.01.005.PMID17328919.
  20. ^Cárdenas, M L; Letelier, J-C; Gutierrez, C; Cornish-Bowden, A; Soto-Andrade, J (2010)."Closure to efficient causation, computability and artificial life"(PDF).Journal of Theoretical Biology.263(1): 79–92.Bibcode:2010JThBi.263...79L.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.11.010.hdl:10533/130547.PMID19962389.
  21. ^Palmer, ML; Williams, RA; Gatherer, D (2016)."Rosen's (M,R) system as an X-machine "(PDF).Journal of Theoretical Biology.408:97–104.Bibcode:2016JThBi.408...97P.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.08.007.PMID27519952.
  22. ^abCornish-Bowden, A; Cárdenas, ML (2020)."Contrasting theories of life: Historical context, current theories. in search of an ideal theory".BioSystems.188:104063.doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2019.104063.PMID31715221.
  23. ^Note, by Judith Rosen, who owns the copyrights to her father's books:Some confusion about Rosen's analysis is due to errata inLife Itself.For example, the diagram that refers to-Systems has more than one error; errors which do not exist in Rosen's manuscript for the book. The bookAnticipatory Systems; Philosophical, Mathematical, and Methodological Foundationshas the same diagram, correctly represented.
  24. ^Gánti, Tibor (2003). Eörs Száthmary; James Griesemer (eds.).The Principles of Life.Oxford University Press.ISBN9780198507260.
  25. ^Eigen, M; Schuster, P (1977). "The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organization. A: emergence of the hypercycle".Naturwissenschaften.64(11): 541–565.doi:10.1007/bf00450633.PMID593400.S2CID42131267.
  26. ^Eigen, M; Schuster, P. "The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organization. B: the abstract hypercycle".Naturwissenschaften.65(1): 7–41.doi:10.1007/bf00420631.S2CID1812273.
  27. ^Eigen, M; Schuster, P. "The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organization. C: the realistic hypercycle".Naturwissenschaften.65(7): 41–369.doi:10.1007/bf00420631.S2CID1812273.
  28. ^Maturana, H. R.; Varela, F. (1980).Autopoiesis and cognition: the realisation of the living.Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
  29. ^Kauffman, S. A. (1969). "Metabolic stability and epigenesis in randomly constructed genetic nets".J. Theor. Biol.22(3): 437–467.Bibcode:1969JThBi..22..437K.doi:10.1016/0022-5193(69)90015-0.PMID5803332.
  30. ^Dyson, F. J. (1982). "A model for the origin of life".J. Mol. Evol.18(5): 344–350.Bibcode:1982JMolE..18..344D.doi:10.1007/bf01733901.PMID7120429.S2CID30423925.
  31. ^Schrödinger, Erwin (1944).What is Life?.Cambridge University Press.
  32. ^Cornish-Bowden, A. (2015). "Tibor Gánti and Robert Rosen: contrasting approaches to the same problem".J. Theor. Biol.381:6–10.Bibcode:2015JThBi.381....6C.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.05.015.PMID25988381.
  33. ^Letelier, J C; Cárdenas, M L; Cornish-Bowden, A (2011). "FromL'Homme Machineto metabolic closure: steps towards understanding life ".J. Theor. Biol.286(1): 100–113.Bibcode:2011JThBi.286..100L.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.06.033.PMID21763318.
  34. ^Igamberdiev, A.U. (2014). "Time rescaling and pattern formation in biological evolution".BioSystems.123:19–26.doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2014.03.002.PMID24690545.
  35. ^Jheeta, S.; Chatzitheodoridis, E.; Devine, Kevin; Block, J. (2021)."The Way forward for the Origin of Life: Prions and Prion-Like Molecules First Hypothesis".Life.11(9): 872.Bibcode:2021Life...11..872J.doi:10.3390/life11090872.PMC8467930.PMID34575021.
  36. ^Cornish-Bowden, A; Cárdenas, M L (2017). "Life before LUCA".J. Theor. Biol.434:68–74.Bibcode:2017JThBi.434...68C.doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.05.023.PMID28536033.
  37. ^Gill, S.; Forterre, P. (2016)."Origin of life: LUCA and extracellular membrane vesicles (EMVs)".Int. J. Astrobiol.15(1): 7–15.Bibcode:2016IJAsB..15....7G.doi:10.1017/S1473550415000282.S2CID44428292.
  38. ^Robert Rosen (2013).Optimality Principles in Biology.Springer.ISBN978-1489964205.

Further reading[edit]

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