A systems approach in biology and biophysics
(Introduction to the article)

Savely L. Savva, MS

Biologists, biophysicists and medical scientists, when encountering phenomena of life and consciousness that do not fit into the current mechanistic paradigm, try to find alternative heuristic approaches to resolve the unsettling situation. Thus ten biologists and physicists presented their views on the relevance of energy and information to mind-body medicine and biology in general in a recent issue of Advances (Vol.13, #4, 1997), the journal of the John Fetzer Institute, one of the few foundations capable of financing unconventional studies in biology and medicine. As K. Klivington put it in his summarizing article, "We clearly did not wind up with a new textbook on the subject (certainly it was not our aim), but we did receive some imaginative speculations on how to do a better job in thinking about the issue at hand."

I found it interesting that there is a general consensus among the participants that the current medical model as well as the concepts of life and consciousness are inadequate. There is a general feeling that the knowledge of the information flows in organisms is essential for understanding life, health and disease ("Disease is essentially an information disorder" P. Bellavite), although some authors believe that only semantic information, i.e., the meaning transferred, is relevant to life (T. Staiger, J. Hoffmeyer). The majority of authors would agree that the DNA of a genome cannot carry all the information necessary for embryogenesis, but none of the participants would refer to the concept of bioinformation or morphogenetic field that has a long history. Perhaps, it sounds more scientific to refer to "the unmanifest structure of the vacuum sea" reflecting "the whole ontogenetic and phylogenetic past" of an organism (M. Conrad), or to a "macrohistorical process" that is embedded in the "ex tremely complex architecture of the cytoskeleton, which is itself copied from its parent cells in an unfinished chain arching back to the beginning of eukaryotic life on this planet" (J. Hoffmeyer), or to "Quantum vitalism" - "macroscopic quantum state" that "can solve the problems of protein shape, differentiation, and 'unitary oneness' in living systems" (S. Hameroff). Only one author (P. Bellavite) explicitly supports the old vitalistic concept, but he rejects a cybernetic approach and the vital importance of a general control function. "It is difficult to say whether there is a 'conductor' (he compares organism with a performing orchestra), because all parts, including the brain, function properly, influencing one another reciprocally."

The following are my considerations as to how to bring biology and medicine closer to the methodology of physics, and bring physics closer to the comprehension of life and the mind as physical realities of our universe in a systemic approach. This ambitious task by necessity cuts across multiple scientific disciplines with mountains of literature in each of them that by no means could be reviewed by one individual. At the same time, a general concept cannot be built from within one discipline. I see myself in a position of an engineer, which I actually am, who set his mind to solve a very practical problem: how to experimentally outline the control system of an organism.

Basically, I propose the following:

·  1. Information plays an increasingly important role in the physical description of the complex systems' dynamics. However, parapsychological studies revealed very peculiar properties of information transfer processes that may be relevant to the understanding of life and consciousness.

·  2. The meaning or the semantic information is relevant only for mind-possessing organisms. Therefore, I propose functional definitions of the mind and consciousness as adaptational mechanisms in the biological evolution.

·  3. The majority of visceral processes in any organism (including that of humans) are automatically controlled. Accordingly, organisms can be perceived as complex automata and described by a cybernetic model. However, organisms' control systems include a complex bioinformation field component that may play the coordinating role for somatic control subsystems. The physical nature of this bioinformation field is as yet unknown.

·  4. Delineating and mapping the organism's control system, its structure and function, is a task of a tremendous practical (for medicine) and scientific importance. The practical way to do this is by simultaneously studying responses of all control systems and subsystems to internal disruptions and ambient interventions including psi healing (which is the direct bioinformation field interaction) as well as to changes in patients' mind set.

Full article is in the newsletter...Bibliography attached is 44 references.
This atrticle was published in the Proceedings of the 42d Annual Meeting of ISSS, Atlanta, GA 1998. A version of this article entitled "Toward a Cybernetic Model of the Organism" was published in the Advances in Mind Body Medicine. Vol.14, #4, 1998 pp. 292-301