The Origin of Life

Raymond Aron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351477994
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Theoretical biology is still in its early stages as an academic discipline. There is even little agreement as to what topics it should deal with or in what manner it should precede; and it is only recently that philosophers felt called upon to notice the relevance of biological topics as evolution or perception to their traditional problems. This work is a publication of the International Union of Biological Sciences, the central organization of all the branches of biology. The main focus here is to explore the possibility of formulating some frame of concepts and methods around which theoretical biology can grow.The intention of this collective effort was that discussions would be concerned, not with the theory of particular biological processes, such as membrane permeability, genetics, and neural activity, but rather with an attempt to discover and formulate general concepts and logical relations characteristic of living as contrasted with inorganic systems. Further, this project is a consideration of implications these might have for general philosophy. Many well-known scientists contributed to this volume, such as J. Maynard Smith, Ernst Mayr, Brian Goodwin, and Renu Thom.The Origin of Life: Toward a Theoretical Biology explores the character of the problems facing any theory of general biology. It contains a series of chapters and exchanges discussing such topics as the origin of life, cellular differentiation, morphogensis, evolution, and indeterminacy in biological and physical systems, the organization of the brain, the statistical mechanics of non-linear oscillators, and many other topics. This is a pioneering volume by recognized leaders in an emerging field the first of four such works.

Subject Index

acquired characters, 20, 44

activation, 12, 106, 107

active sites, 117, 119

adaptations, 19, 20, 42, 49, 113, 200, 207

adaptation, molecular, 118

aether, 180, 191, 198, 204

allosteric, 68, 87, 117

alpha-rhythm, 140

alternative end states, 10, 17, 108, 166, 170

algorithm, 81, 89

amphibian oocytes, 106

amplification of D N A, 106, 107, 109

analogues, chemical, 108

anthropomorphism, 135, 160

antibodies, 118

anticipation, 208

archetypes, 13, 22, 40, 166

attractor, 33, 37, 41, 155, 161, 162, 163, 165, 169

auditory stimuli, 146

automata, 76, 89, 107, 134, 137, 138, 209

automobiles, 23

axial gradients, 129, 135

basal bodies, 17

bifurcation, 159, 168, 169, 174

biological clocks, 137

biologies, the two, 42

biotonic laws, 8

birds, 44, 45, 48

Boolean logic, 137

brain, 89, 93, 140

bridge, 7

buffering, 12, 13, 14, 16

canalization, 12, 13, 16, 20, 36, 118, 126, 177

cascades, 36

catastrophe, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 160, 164, 169

elementary, 155, 157, 158, 159

generalised, 159, 160

Hamiltonian, 160

points, 157

7 types, 157

...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• preface
• The Basic Idea of Biology
• Cause and Effect in Biology Reprinted from Science, 134, 1501 (1961)
• An Approach Sc a Blueprint for a Primitive Organism
• The Physical Basis of Coding and Reliability in Biological Evolution
• Towards a Physical Theory of Self-organization
• Theoretical Biology and Molecular Biology
• A Note on Evolution and Changes in the Quantity of Genetic Information
• Does Evolution Depend on Random Search ?
• The Counting Problem
• The French Flag Problems A Contribution to the Discussion on Pattern Development and Regulation
• The Division of Cells and the Fusion of Ideas
• Tolerance Spaces and the Brain
• Une Théorie Dynamique de la Morphogenèse
• ‘Boxes’ as a model of pattern-formation
• Note on Topics for the Second Symposium
• Author Index
• Subject Index