title: Overcoming the Newtonian paradigm: the unfinished project of theoretical biology from a Schellingian perspective.
abstract: Defending Robert Rosen's claim that in every confrontation between physics and biology it is physics that has always had to give ground, it is shown that many of the most important advances in mathematics and physics over the last two centuries have followed from Schelling's demand for a new physics that could make the emergence of life intelligible. Consequently, while reductionism prevails in biology, many biophysicists are resolutely anti-reductionist. This history is used to identify and defend a fragmented but progressive tradition of anti-reductionist biomathematics. It is shown that the mathematico-physico-chemical morphology research program, the biosemiotics movement, and the relational biology of Rosen, although they have developed independently of each other, are built on and advance this anti-reductionist tradition of thought. It is suggested that understanding this history and its relationship to the broader history of post-Newtonian science could provide guidance for and justify both the integration of these strands and radically new work in post-reductionist biomathematics.
authors.affiliation: Philosophy, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. Electronic address: agare@swin.edu.au.
authors.forename: Arran
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gare
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D008967:Molecular Biology / Q000379:methods*; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods*; D018511:Systems Integration
keywords: Biosemiotics; Emergence; Epigenesis; Reductionism; Relational biology; Teleology