Functional Stability and Systems Level Causation

Strand, Anders; Oftedal, Gry

doi:10.1086/605811

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Systems medicine risks reducing patients to systems, while current concepts of systems may be inadequate in comprehensively mapping human functioning [47,85]. Given such caveats, it is interesting to note that conceptual work is ongoing to further such understanding – with great potential for understanding of patients [17,20,22–26,41,56,57,63,76,77,81,87–92].…”

Section: Analysis and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting personal: can systems medicine integrate scientific and humanistic conceptions of the patient?

Vogt

Ulvestad

Eriksen

et al. 2014

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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Rationale, aims and objectives The practicing doctor, and most obviously the primary care clinician who encounters the full complexity of patients, faces several fundamental but intrinsically related theoretical and practical challenges -strongly actualized by so-called medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) and multi-morbidity. Systems medicine, which is the emerging application of systems biology to medicine and a merger of molecular biomedicine, systems theory and mathematical modelling, has recently been proposed as a primary care-centered strategy for medicine that promises to meet these challenges. Significantly, it has been proposed to do so in a way that at first glance may seem compatible with humanistic medicine. More specifically, it is promoted as an integrative, holistic, personalized and patient-centered approach. In this article, we ask whether and to what extent systems medicine can provide a comprehensive conceptual account of and approach to the patient and the root causes of health problems that can be reconciled with the concept of the patient as a person, which is an essential theoretical element in humanistic medicine. Methods We answer this question through a comparative analysis of the theories of primary care doctor Eric Cassell and systems biologist Denis Noble. Results and conclusions We argue that, although systems biological concepts, notably Noble's theory of biological relativity and downward causation, are highly relevant for understanding human beings and health problems, they are nevertheless insufficient in fully bridging the gap to humanistic medicine. Systems biologists are currently unable to conceptualize living wholes, and seem unable to account for meaning, value and symbolic interaction, which are central concepts in humanistic medicine, as constraints on human health. Accordingly, systems medicine as currently envisioned cannot be said to be integrative, holistic, personalized or patient-centered in a humanistic medical sense.

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Section: Analysis and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting personal: can systems medicine integrate scientific and humanistic conceptions of the patient?

Vogt

Ulvestad

Eriksen

et al. 2014

Evaluation Clinical Practice

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“…Discussions among philosophers of science has long mainly concerned the relation between scientific theories debating for instance the questions whether classical genetics theory and concepts can be reduced to molecular genetics theory and concepts (Schaffner 1967 ; Hull 1974 ). More recently, however, this approach to reduction in the biological sciences has been deemed less fruitful, and there is now more focus on the role of reduction in explanation (Waters 1990 ; Bickle 2003 ) and its relation to accounts of causation (Dupre 1993 ; Strand and Oftedal 2009 ).…”

Section: Reduction and Systems Approaches In Biology Medicine And Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of philosophy of science in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): the case of nanomedicine

Oftedal

2014

Life Sci Soc Policy

Self Cite

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Research on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) of life sciences and new technologies has mainly been focused on impacts and consequences, while the emerging framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) focuses rather on increased involvement and reflexivity in research processes to foster science and technology that better answers the needs of society. I argue that philosophy of science should be a central feature of RRI and demonstrate how the philosophy of science can contribute in this sense. I show how investigating basic assumptions in research, here exemplified by reductive assumptions in causal modeling, can have important ethical and societal implications.

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“…). A characteristic of the system, as a whole, is its functional stability against a back‐drop of continuously changing and perturbed sub‐systems .…”

Section: Multi‐levelness and The Search For Organizing Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From molecules to organs, levels are inter‐related and inter‐dependent, so that the organism is able to conserve and adapt the integrity of its structural and functional organization against a back‐drop of continuous changes within the organism and its environment. This capacity, whether it is described as ‘autoconservation’ , ‘functional stability’ , ‘evolvability’ or ‘robustness’ , is a consequence of non‐linear spatio‐temporal intra‐ and inter‐cellular interactions. To understand disease‐relevant cellular processes, we therefore require methodologies that allow us to study non‐linear spatio‐temporal systems with multiple levels of structural and functional organization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The search for organizing principles as a cure against reductionism in systems medicine

Wolkenhauer

Green

2013

The FEBS Journal

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Biological complexity has forced scientists to develop highly reductive approaches, with an ever-increasing degree of specialization. As a consequence, research projects have become fragmented, and their results strongly dependent on the experimental context. The general research question, that originally motivated these projects, appears to have been forgotten in many highly specialized research programmes. We here investigate the prospects for use of an old regulative ideal from systems theory to describe the organization of cellular systems 'in general' by identifying key concepts, challenges and strategies to pursue the search for organizing principles. We argue that there is no tension between the complexity of biological systems and the search for organizing principles. On the contrary, it is the complexity of organisms and the current level of techniques and knowledge that urge us to renew the search for organizing principles in order to meet the challenges that are arise from reductive approaches in systems medicine. Reductive approaches, as important and inevitable as they are, should be complemented by an integrative strategy that de-contextualizes through abstractions, and thereby generalizes results.

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Functional Stability and Systems Level Causation

Cited by 15 publications

References 21 publications

Getting personal: can systems medicine integrate scientific and humanistic conceptions of the patient?

Getting personal: can systems medicine integrate scientific and humanistic conceptions of the patient?

The role of philosophy of science in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): the case of nanomedicine

The search for organizing principles as a cure against reductionism in systems medicine

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