« Jochen Fromm om Agent Oriented Software Engineering | Main | Google AdSense på svenska »
juni 25, 2004
Om syftenas beräkningar
A Calculus of Purpose (PLos Biology) diskuterar ändamålsförklaringar inom biologin.
Why is the sky blue? Any scientist will answer this question with a statement of mechanism: Atmospheric gas scatters some wavelengths of light more than others. To answer with a statement of purpose—e.g., to say the sky is blue in order to make people happy—would not cross the scientific mind. Yet in biology we often pose “why” questions in which it is purpose, not mechanism, that interests us. The question “Why does the eye have a lens?” most often calls for the answer that the lens is there to focus light rays, and only rarely for the answer that the lens is there because lens cells are induced by the retina from overlying ectoderm.
...
[O]ne can begin to discern several of the elements that, when present together, elevate investigations in computational biology to a level at which ordinary biologists take serious notice. Such elements include network topologies anchored in experimental data, fine-grained explorations of large parameter spaces, identification of “useful” network behaviors, and hypothesisdriven analyses of the mathematical or statistical bases for such behaviors. These elements can be seen as the foundations of a new calculus of purpose, enabling biologists to take on the much-neglected teleological side of molecular biology. “What purpose does all this complexity serve?” may soon go from a question few biologists dare to pose, to one on everyone's lips.
Posted by hakank at juni 25, 2004 08:45 FM Posted to Komplexitet/emergens