Portal:Systems science

Systems biology is the computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach (holism instead of the more traditional reductionism) to biological research. This multifaceted research domain necessitates the collaborative efforts of chemists, biologists, mathematicians, physicists, and engineers to decipher the biology of intricate living systems by merging various quantitative molecular measurements with carefully constructed mathematical models. It represents a comprehensive method for comprehending the complex relationships within biological systems. In contrast to conventional biological studies that typically center on isolated elements, systems biology seeks to combine different biological data to create models that illustrate and elucidate the dynamic interactions within a system. This methodology is essential for understanding the complex networks of genes, proteins, and metabolites that influence cellular activities and the traits of organisms.  One of the aims of systems biology is to model and discover emergent properties, of cells, tissues and organisms functioning as a system whose theoretical description is only possible using techniques of systems biology. By exploring how function emerges from dynamic interactions, systems biology bridges the gaps that exist between molecules and physiological processes.

As a paradigm, systems biology is usually defined in antithesis to the so-called reductionist paradigm (biological organisation), although it is consistent with the scientific method. The distinction between the two paradigms is referred to in these quotations: "the reductionist approach has successfully identified most of the components and many of the interactions but, unfortunately, offers no convincing concepts or methods to understand how system properties emerge ... the pluralism of causes and effects in biological networks is better addressed by observing, through quantitative measures, multiple components simultaneously and by rigorous data integration with mathematical models." (Sauer et al.) "Systems biology ... is about putting together rather than taking apart, integration rather than reduction. It requires that we develop ways of thinking about integration that are as rigorous as our reductionist programmes, but different. ... It means changing our philosophy, in the full sense of the term." (Denis Noble) (Full article...)

This image illustrates part of the Mandelbrot set fractal. The size of the JPEG file encoding the bitmap of this image is more than 17 kilobytes (approximately 140000 bits). The same file can be generated by a computer program much shorter than 140000 bits, however. Thus, the Kolmogorov complexity of the JPEG file encoding the bitmap is much less than 140000.

• Wikiproject Systems
• WikiProject Science
• WikiProject Philosophy
• WikiProject History of Science

Béla Heinrich Bánáthy (Hungarian: Bánáthy Béla; December 1, 1919 – September 4, 2003) was a Hungarian-American linguist, and Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. He is known as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, established the International Systems Institute in 1982, and was co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group in 1984.

He grew up in largely rural Hungary and served in the Hungarian military during World War II. When Russia invaded Hungary in April 1945, he and his family fled to Allied-occupied Austria and lived in a displaced persons camp for six years. In 1951, they emigrated to Chicago, sponsored by the Presbyterian church. Within the year his former commanding officer suggested to the U.S. government that they hire Bánáthy as a Hungarian instructor at the Army Language School in Monterey, California. While living in Monterey, he founded the White Stag Leadership Development Program. (Full article...)

• ... that the Yugoslavian Mihajlo D. Mesarovic in 1970s wanted to provide a unified and formalized mathematical approach to all major systems concepts.
• ... that the American ecologist Howard T. Odum in 1950 gave a novel definition of ecology as the study of large entities (ecosystems) at the "natural level of integration".
• ... that self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source?
• ... that a successful experimental system must be stable and reproducible enough for scientists to make sense of the system's behavior, but unpredictable enough that it can produce useful results?