A Physicist's Renewed Look at Biology: Twenty Years Later

Abstract

At the very beginnings of science \nthe striking dissimilarities between the \nbehavior of living and nonliving things \nbecame obvious. Two tendencies can \nbe discerned in the attempts to arrive \nat a unified view of our world. One \ntendency is to use the living organism \nas the model system. This tendency is \nexemplified by Aristotle. For him, the \nson of a physician and. the keen observer \nof many forms of life, it was \nobvious that things develop according \nto plans. Every animal and plant is \ngenerated in some definite way, runs \nthrough a cycle of development in \nwhich it unfolds its inherent plan, and \nsuccumbs to death and decay. For \nAristotle, this very obvious feature of \nthe world which surrounds us is the \nmodel for understanding our (sublunar) \nworld. Astronomy is the exception \nand offers the contrast of an eternal \nperiodic system subject to neither \ngeneration nor decay.

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