The Model of Open Systems: Beyond Molecular Biology

Abstract

A New View on Scientific Practice and Theory Two questions appear to have crystallized in our present Colloquium. First is the question of specialization and generalization. We are all aware that the enormous content, the complex techniques and sophisticated concepts of modern science require specialization. On the other hand, the question arises: Is there nothing common in the sciences-from physics to biology to the social sciences to history-so that the scientific enterprise must remain a bundle of isolated specialities, without connecting link and progressively leading to the type of learned idiot who is perfect in his small field but is ignorant and unaware of the basic problems we call philosophical, and which are of primary concern to man in one of the greatest crises of his history? Secondly-we all feel that this is a time of scientific reorientation. Whether this is expressed in the indeterminacy principle of physics and the gaps in the theory of elementary particles, in biological problems so that mystical views like those of Teilhard de Chardin are taken into serious considerations, or in the present dissatisfaction with psychological and sociological theories-it is the common feeling that something new is required, and that yesterday's mechanistic universe which has safely guided science through some 250 years, has come to an end. One way to approach the problem is what the program of our colloquium calls "the historical vs. the logical approach." The logical approach, as we find it in innumerable philosophical writings, is, in broad outline and oversimplification , something like this: We are confronted by observation with sense data, facts, pointer readings, protocol sentences-whatever expression you prefer. From these we derive generalizations which, when properly formulated, are called laws of nature. These are fitted into conceptual schemes called theories, which in the well-known way of hypothetico-deductive system, allow 17 A. D. Breck et al. (eds.), Biology, History, and Natural Philosophy