In the wake of the Human Genome Project, ‘pragmatic systems biologists’ emerged at the turn of the century to integrate new genomic data with mathematical models of living phenomena in hopes of achieving outcomes requiring computation of large data sets, like improving the predictive capacity of medicine by identifying genetic indications of potential diseases before they develop. Since they favor a reductionist bottom-up model of whole systems that embraces the ontological claim that the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts, their use of the term “system” is a bit misleading. It is precisely due to the falsity of reductionism’s ontological claim that medical practices based on genetics, like polygenic risk scores, are practically useless; these scores are supposed to anticipate genetic-predispositions toward diseases yet they produce as many false predictions as correct ones. [8] The function of the genome is constrained by higher-level processes in the organism, thus it’s irrational to think that analyzing the genome could provide reliable predictions about that by which it is determined. Systems biology in its truest sense is concerned with living entities as wholes, whose parts must be understood thoroughly yet in the proper context. Thus, the genome must be understood in the context of the living cell, cells must be understood in various capacities within the living organism, and living entities must be understood in both their objective and subjective aspects.

Again, reduction (distinguished from reductionism) as a mode of analysis in biology is needed. Comprehensive descriptions of the mechanical and chemical aspects of life are necessary but not sufficient to fully and soberly comprehend living cognitive phenomena. Although a uniform mechanical-chemical framework may describe nature horizontally across bodily forms of living and nonliving nature, a multiform heterogeneous framework that subsumes or sublates mechanical and chemical aspects is required for describing nature vertically, plunging into the cognitive depths that determine biological function and activity. The uniformity of nature reduces all living and nonliving phenomena to mechanistic principles – the material and efficient aspects of cause, i.e. the physical constituents of and the external agency involved in changing an object – however, this understanding only reflects an immediate acquaintance (ordo cognoscendi) with the natural world. Conceiving the mediated development behind what immediately appears to the senses (ordo essendi) requires considering the formal and final aspects of cause, i.e. principles of formation/origination and that for the sake of which an object exists. This homogeneous framework, embracing all four aspects of Aristotelian causality, allows a critical appraisal of the similarities and distinctions between life and nonlife. Thus, while analyzing living and nonliving phenomena through material and efficient causality provides a uniform view of natural objects as atomic, molecular, or chemical conglomerates being determined by external forces like gravity, taking the perspectives of formal and final causality into account shows the distinctively biogenic or abiogenic origin of a natural object and whether it acts for the sake of itself (living) or is merely an object determined/utilized by things external to it (nonliving).     

A heterogeneous conceptual framework that accommodates the similarities and differences between life and nonlife, as well as life’s objective and subjective aspects, proves to be a dialectical approach. The utility of dialectical thinking is seen in the historical development of how 21st-century biologists view the dynamic between form and function. The history of morphology in general – around the late 18th and early 19th century – saw a dichotomy between the formalists and functionalists, where the former were focused solely on morphological structure as the defining feature of organisms while the latter were concerned with the function shaping form. [9] This dichotomy also concerned architects. In 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright – designer of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City – explained that “[f]orm follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” [10] Significantly, Wright is known for being inspired by organic design principles allowing him to conceive of form and function dialectically as a heterogeneous unity or unity-in-diversity. Contemporary biologists have also begun thinking about living structures in this way. Proponents of embodied physiology view living structures as processes or activity, just as much as functions are, thus the rigid distinction between form and function dissolves. [11] So, despite the immediate opposition between them – between the extended body’s particular properties (form) and the process that such determinations are meant to support (function) –  the mediation of dialectic thinking reveals the fundamental unity that underlies form and function such that they can be viewed as distinctive moments of a singular dynamic organic activity. Dialectical thought facilitates transcendence from the rigid compartmentalized understanding that underlies reductionism.

Liberation from Neo-Darwinian reductionism is leading cutting-edge scientists to recognize the cognitive basis of evolution, where problem-solving, decision-making (including capacities to tolerate uncertainty and harness randomness), and cooperation with others play crucial roles in the purposeful evolution of living entities. [12] The volitional, cognitive, and emotional continuity observed throughout animals and humans – where “there are transitional stages among species, not large gaps; and that the differences among many animals are differences in degree rather than in kind” [13] – is comprehended as a spectrum of increasing individual autonomy (self-determined maintenance of organismic form and function through time) [14] where organisms become more independent from – “emancipat[ed] from direct influences and fluctuations [of]” [15] – the environment, as their sophistication gradually enhances reaching the height of the human form of life. These conclusions regarding the evolution of consciousness are based on the exponentially growing body of empirical and experimentally demonstrable evidence of 21st-century biology. 

While these trail-blazing scientists recognize the fundamental connection between life and cognition and some of the implications this has on evolution, the actual origin of cognition remains ever-elusive. Even the notion of a cellular basis of consciousness does not explain how the objective and subjective mix with each other, even at the cellular level. Hegel’s philosophy offers a robust dialectic conceptual framework to comprehend this – such that the objective is determined by the subjective and the subjective knows itself through the objective – as well as a deeper fundamental knowledge of systems as a telescoping series of syllogisms.

This year’s Science & Scientist conference hopes to (1) interface Vedantic and Hegelian philosophies [both dialectical] with organismic and systems biology, (2)humbly contribute to the development of a more philosophical conception of systems that will serve the progress of 21st-century biology, and (3) stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue aimed at deepening mutual understanding among the speakers’ valuable viewpoints. We’d also like to consider questions such as (1) what experiments can distinguish between [a] the organismic level of organization exerting top-down agency on the cellular level, and [b] the cellular level exerting bottom-up agency on the organismic level? and (2) how does conceiving living entities as irreducible cognitive systems influence evolutionary theory?