Walter Elsasser, prophet of biological complexity, seeker of simplifying rules.
Walter Elsasser was an eminent theoretical physicist who devoted much of his spare time for over half a century (approximately 1935-1987) to the development of a holistic theory of organisms. The three basic principles of his biological theory are a) order in the large which dominates heterogeneity in the small; b) creative selection of the relatively small number of cells and organisms in nature as compared with the immense number of potential molecular states allowed by quantum mechanics, based on the number of atoms, molecules and chemical bonds in a cell, and c) holistic memory in reproduction of cells and organisms, a process which is supplementary to, and fundamentally different in type from the information stored in DNA. His ideas have either been coolly received or ignored by biologists, at least partly because of their purely formal character, although that is considered the sine qua non for theories in physical science. I cite a variety of experiments at the cellular level that illustrate his principles. Those experiments add a concrete dimension to his abstractions that hopefully will promote a dialog between theory and practice to facilitate development of a non-reductionist biology.
Rubin
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Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Life Sciences Addition, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3200, USA. hrubin@berkeley.edu
D000818:Animals; D001695:Biology / Q000266:history*; D048708:Cell Growth Processes; D048788:Growth and Development; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011789:Quantum Theory; D014481:United States