Registration for a live webinar on 'Precision medicine treatment for anticancer drug resistance' is now open.
See webinar detailsWe noted you are experiencing viewing problems
-
Check with your IT department that JWPlatform, JWPlayer and Amazon AWS & CloudFront are not being blocked by your network. The relevant domains are *.jwplatform.com, *.jwpsrv.com, *.jwpcdn.com, jwpltx.com, jwpsrv.a.ssl.fastly.net, *.amazonaws.com and *.cloudfront.net. The relevant ports are 80 and 443.
-
Check the following talk links to see which ones work correctly:
Auto Mode
HTTP Progressive Download Send us your results from the above test links at access@hstalks.com and we will contact you with further advice on troubleshooting your viewing problems. -
No luck yet? More tips for troubleshooting viewing issues
-
Contact HST Support access@hstalks.com
-
Please review our troubleshooting guide for tips and advice on resolving your viewing problems.
-
For additional help, please don't hesitate to contact HST support access@hstalks.com
We hope you have enjoyed this limited-length demo
This is a limited length demo talk; you may
login or
review methods of
obtaining more access.
- View the Talks
-
3. A brief history of evolutionary biology
- Prof. Neil Blackstone
-
4. Major transitions in the history of life
- Prof. Neil Blackstone
-
5. On the origins of life
- Dr. William B. Miller Jr.
-
6. The origin of eukaryotes
- Prof. Neil Blackstone
-
7. Trichoplax and the origin of animal complexity
- Prof. Bernd Schierwater
-
8. On the value of comparative physiology
- Prof. Karen L. Sweazea
-
11. How to ‘deconvolute’ lung evolution - evolutionary lessons from cell culture
- Prof. John S. Torday
-
12. Using lung evolution as a cipher for physiology - pathophysiology
- Prof. John S. Torday
-
13. The unicellular origins of complex physiology
- Prof. John S. Torday
-
14. Pleiotropy - cellular-molecular evolution in action
- Prof. John S. Torday
Printable Handouts
Navigable Slide Index
- Introduction
- Preamble
- The great chain of being
- Physiology as an assembly of building blocks
- History of descriptive physiology
- Systems biology
- Waddington’s ‘landscapes’ of physiology
- Downward causation vs. cell-cell signaling
- Evolution flow diagram
- The biota expansion
- Molecular changes mediating evolution (1)
- Molecular changes mediating evolution (2)
- Ontogeny-phylogeny based on molecular changes
- From phylogeny-ontogeny to homeostasis & repair
- Development, homeostasis, repair = evolution
- Holism vs. reductionism
- Philosophical views about nature (1)
- Philosophical views about nature (2)
- Cell communication as mechanism of novelty
- Homeostasis as the mechanism for evolution
- David Bohm: wholeness and the implicate order
- Explicate/Implicate order as a Moebius strip
- Conclusions
Topics Covered
- History of descriptive physiology
- Systems biology
- The biota expansion
- Downward causation vs. cell-cell signaling
- Holism vs. Reductionism: philosophical views about nature
- Molecular changes mediating evolution
- Cell communication as mechanism of novelty
- From phylogeny-ontogeny to homeostasis & repair
- Homeostasis as the mechanism for evolution
- Explicate/Implicate order
Talk Citation
Torday, J.S. (2016, February 29). On the utility of a mechanistic approach to physiology - descriptive vs. mechanistic biology [Video file]. In The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection, Henry Stewart Talks. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.69645/PAOM7697.Export Citation (RIS)
Publication History
Financial Disclosures
- Prof. John S. Torday has not informed HSTalks of any commercial/financial relationship that it is appropriate to disclose.
On the utility of a mechanistic approach to physiology - descriptive vs. mechanistic biology
Published on February 29, 2016
11 min
A selection of talks on Cell Biology
Transcript
Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Lecture one, Descriptive
versus Mechanistic Biology.
0:05
Contemporary Biology is on par
with Alchemy and Astrology
in that it is descriptive
and non-predictive.
The Evolutionary Physiology
course is structured
to provide a mechanistic,
predictive way of
thinking about biology.
0:19
Up until the publication
of the Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin in 1859,
man was thought to
have descended from God,
angels and demons,
by the great chain of being.
Darwin offered
a different form of descent
from animal ancestors,
which was a radical departure.
0:35
Despite our enlightened
understanding
of our evolutionary origins, we
continue to think of physiology
in the same way that
it has been thought of
the last 3,000 years.
As an assemblage
of Lego blocks formed
by the skeleton
and internal organs.
0:49
Down through history,
physiologists such as Galen,
Harvey, Claude Bernard,
Walter Cannon, Ewald Weibel,
and J.B. West, have honed
and refined that
descriptive relationship
culminating in systems biology,
which is a mathematical
expression
of the very same
descriptive view of physiology.
1:07
Systems biology reduces
the processes of physiology
to its functional elements,
DNA and phenotypes
into post-biological networks
that generate physiology
in adaptation
to the environment.
This perspective is predicated
on the current view of biology
as a progression from
DNA to RNA to protein.
Yet we know that you cannot
generate phenotype from DNA.
1:31
The great epigeneticist
Waddington attempted
to envision a more
holistic view of physiology
as landscapes supported
by genetic pathways
that underpin them,
but this was only a metaphor
without any fundamental
understanding
of the interrelationships
between genes
and phenotypes either.
Hide