Toward a Physical (Synergetic) Theory of Biological Coordination

It is the quest for laws and principles of pattern generation, rather than particular neural mechanisms or instantiations of those laws, that spurs the present approach.

Abstract

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the successes of modern molecular biology, the great unresolved problem of all biology remains: the manner by which complex biological systems are coordinated to produce functionally-specific ordered behavior or spatiotemporal patterns. Eaced with complexity (in terms of the number of potential degrees of freedom), a conventional approach is to unravel the material substrate, component by component, to find the cause of pattern generation at an ever smaller scale. Witness, for example, neurobiology's search for the command neuron in "simple" invertebrate preparations, the role of which is to evoke or trigger a pattern stored in the neural structure (e.g., [2]). Or the apparently self-evident existence of central pattern generators — patterned neuronal activities that can persist independent of afferent feedback influences — whose neurophysiological mechanisms are currently the subject of much investigation. The noun form "generator" expresses the material reductionist's hope that the circuitry can be completely identified and isolated. One is reminded of POINCARE [3] in this regard, that "…the aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations among things; outside these relations there is no reality knowable." It is the quest for laws and principles of pattern generation, rather than particular neural mechanisms or instantiations of those laws, that spurs the present approach.