pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

From bottom-up approaches to levels of organization and extended critical transitions - PubMed

  • ️Sun Jan 01 2012

From bottom-up approaches to levels of organization and extended critical transitions

Giuseppe Longo et al. Front Physiol. 2012.

Abstract

Biological thinking is structured by the notion of level of organization. We will show that this notion acquires a precise meaning in critical phenomena: they disrupt, by the appearance of infinite quantities, the mathematical (possibly equational) determination at a given level, when moving at an "higher" one. As a result, their analysis cannot be called genuinely bottom-up, even though it remains upward in a restricted sense. At the same time, criticality and related phenomena are very common in biology. Because of this, we claim that bottom-up approaches are not sufficient, in principle, to capture biological phenomena. In the second part of this paper, following (Bailly, 1991b), we discuss a strong criterium of level transition. The core idea of the criterium is to start from the breaking of the symmetries and determination at a "first" level in order to "move" at the others. If biological phenomena have multiple, sustained levels of organization in this sense, then they should be interpreted as extended critical transitions.

Keywords: bottom-up; extended criticality; levels of organization; organism; renormalization; singularity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

  • From physics to biology by extending criticality and symmetry breakings.

    Longo G, Montévil M. Longo G, et al. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2011 Aug;106(2):340-7. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2011.03.005. Epub 2011 Mar 23. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2011. PMID: 21419157 Review.

  • From self-organized to extended criticality.

    Lovecchio E, Allegrini P, Geneston E, West BJ, Grigolini P. Lovecchio E, et al. Front Physiol. 2012 Apr 26;3:98. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2012.00098. eCollection 2012. Front Physiol. 2012. PMID: 22557972 Free PMC article.

  • The future of Cochrane Neonatal.

    Soll RF, Ovelman C, McGuire W. Soll RF, et al. Early Hum Dev. 2020 Nov;150:105191. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2020.105191. Epub 2020 Sep 12. Early Hum Dev. 2020. PMID: 33036834

  • Floquet quantum criticality.

    Berdanier W, Kolodrubetz M, Parameswaran SA, Vasseur R. Berdanier W, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Sep 18;115(38):9491-9496. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1805796115. Epub 2018 Aug 29. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018. PMID: 30158169 Free PMC article.

  • Why do we need theories?

    Longo G, Soto AM. Longo G, et al. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2016 Oct;122(1):4-10. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2016.06.005. Epub 2016 Jul 4. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2016. PMID: 27390105 Free PMC article. Review.

Cited by

References

    1. Als-Nielsen J., Birgeneau R. J. (1977). Mean field theory, the Ginzburg criterion, and marginal dimensionality of phase transitions. Am. J. Phys. 45, 554–56010.1119/1.11019 - DOI
    1. Bailly F. (1991a). L’anneau des disciplines. Revue Internationale de Systémique 5
    1. Bailly F. (1991b). Niveaux d’organisation, changements de niveaux, finalité. Philosophica 47, 31–47
    1. Bailly F., Gaill F., Mosseri R. (1988). Fonctions biologiques, niveaux d’organisation et dimensions fractales. Revue Internationale de Systémique 2, 295
    1. Bailly F., Longo G. (2008). Extended critical situations: the physical singularity of life phenomena. J. Biol. Syst. 16, 309.10.1142/S0218339008002514 - DOI