Abstract
In this final chapter, the method of scientific inquiry in biological sciences is examined to elucidate physiology’s failure to identify the phenomenon of autonomous movement of the heart and blood. It is shown that the research method, appropriate in physical sciences, by which an organism is reduced to genes, organelles, cells, and organs and is reconstructed by applying mathematical models, is unable to account for the systems-level causality it purports to explain. Such hypothesis-driven observer approach essentially remains external to the organism and is unable to ascribe causality to qualitative phenomena such as life, feeling, and volition, which constitute an integral part of the organism. This leads to an unbridgeable (Cartesian) split in biological sciences between mind and body, arising from the essential nature of human constitution. To complement this approach, a brief outline of the participatory way of science has been described by which the ontological, self-organizing principle of an organism is identified in the context of the kingdoms of nature. Viewed from this perspective, the cardiovascular system emerges as the pivotal organ of evolutionary development with hierarchical levels of organization identified as the physical, life, soul, and specifically human level. It is proposed that such a human-centered approach sets physiology on a firm epistemological ground, promotes an open-ended inquiry, and assures its continued importance for the future of medicine.
The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley (1870)
It is not enough to dwell in nature sentimentally and esthetically, grafting such awareness to a scientific infrastructure which largely denies nature. The need is for a new science of nature, different from science of matter and based on other human faculties besides the analytic mind. A basis for this science is the discovery of authentic wholeness.
Henri Bortoft (1996)
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Notes
- 1.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) is one of the principal architects of the mathematical science called the General Systems Theory (GST). The aim of the GST was to avoid repeating previous (unsuccessful) attempts of formulating a unified theory by reducing various sciences to physics. Rather, von Bertalanffy tried to unite them by “structural uniformities of different levels of reality.” Just as the theory of probability deals with “chance events,” irrespective of their nature, so would the GST deal with “organized wholes.” It was von Bertalanffy’s vision to apply GST to all systems regardless of their nature, including physics, biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, culture, history, etc. GST is the forerunner of the modern systems biology (cf. Sect. 25.5). According to Bortoft, von Bertalanffy’s “science of structural uniformities of different levels of reality” pursues the same ideal which was first introduced into science by Rene Descartes, envisioning a unified theory of mathematics, the mathesis universalis (cf. Footnote 14.3) [7].
- 2.
Vitalism ascribes the properties of specific structure, function, and life of the organism to supramaterial “life forces” that are inaccessible to empiric inquiry and are therefore deemed unscientific. The question of specific life forces must be solved empirically in the same manner as the question of physical forces [14].
- 3.
According to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), founder of the modern theory of knowledge, all appearances (phenomena) are merely representations of the things which are unknown to us, as to their essence. Since human consciousness has no direct access to the outer world, but only via the senses, our conscious representations, produced by the brain, have, according to Kant, only subjective value. Similarly, in Kant’s view, concepts without sensory perception are “empty concepts,” mere forms of thought without objective reality [15].
For many twentieth-century epistemologists from Kant to Popper, human thinking which brings order and lawfulness into the sensory phenomena has no objective significance. This results in the reduction of reality to what can be grasped by the senses and in the final analysis to hypothetical atoms and subatomic particles which are treated as mathematical structures. Such view is in opposition to the empirical ontological idealism introduced by Plato and Aristotle and developed further by German idealistic philosophers G.F. Hegel, J.G. Fichte, I.H. Fichte, F.W. Schelling, and others. It was set on firm epistemological basis by J. W. Goethe, F. Schiller, I. P. Troxler, R. Steiner, A.N. Whitehead, N. Hartmann, W. Heisenberg, and several modernist philosophers of science by whom the scientific process consists of penetrating what is sense perceptible (percept) with lawful ideas brought to light by thinking (concept) [16].
- 4.
In 1872, at the 45th symposium of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in Leipzig, Emil Du Bous-Reymond delivered a widely publicized lecture on “The Boundaries of Natural Science” in which he submitted that the secrets of matter and force are not accessible to human cognition, “ignoramus et ignorabimus … we do not know and will never know.” He later partially reversed his view to “dubitemus” (we doubt, instead of ignorabimus) and maintained that the origin of movement, sensation in unconscious nerves, and the origin of free will are “transcendent” and therefore incapable of being answered by science.
- 5.
The concept introduced by John Locke (1632–1704) on the basis that primary qualities are objective characteristics of outer things, whereas the secondary qualities such as color, sound, taste, heat, or cold are only subjective experiences mediated by the senses, derived from the primary qualities, and not quantifiable and therefore not part of “objective” nature [21].
- 6.
Aristotle distinguished four types of causes (or principles) by which things are known: (a) the material cause, e.g., the metal of the wheel; (b) the formal cause, e.g., the idea of the wheel (its essence or the concept); (c) the efficient cause, e.g., the active cause by which the craftsman makes the wheel; (d) the final cause, i.e., the purpose for which the wheel was made. In the case of linear (mechanical) causality referred to by Du Bois-Raymond, for example, when one billiard ball (material cause) strikes another, causing its movement (efficient cause), only the working of the material and efficient causes are recognized by science. This makes the individual components of the mechanical system amenable to calculation and the “whole” can (justifiably) be derived from its parts. Characteristically, the formal and final causes are missing in a mechanical system, making such a law an abstraction when applied to a living system [20].
- 7.
The concept of “sublated” state was originally developed by Hegel and pertains to a border condition (also of substance) between “being” and “non-being,” or the “emergence” and its polar state, “submergence” [20].
- 8.
An analogy from the physical properties of water near critical temperature illustrates the dynamics of such a state. Under normal conditions, water is nearly incompressible, has a low thermal expansion coefficient, and is an excellent solvent with a high dielectric constant, i.e., it rapidly neutralizes electric charge. Near critical point (at 374 °C and 22.064 MPa) where liquid and vapor phases coexist, these properties are reversed into exact opposites: water becomes compressible, a poor solvent, and shows preference for mixing with nonpolar molecules [39].
- 9.
The concept of causative agency is equivalent to Goethe’s and Steiner’s “formative force” (“bildende Kraft”) [14]. The concept of “active information” introduced by David Bohm and David Peat [40] has an equivalent meaning in physics. In terms of Aristotelian levels of causality, “active information” can be equated to formal cause (cf. Footnote 5).
- 10.
The spatial dimensions in the human body range from 10−12 m for atoms to 10−1 m for organs, and the time scales involved a span from 10−6 s (rate of chemical reactions) to over 109 s (average human life, cf. Fig. 23.9). It is estimated that simulation of the chemical process involved in the folding of a single protein molecule (a tertiary protein structure) would require several months of computing time on a most powerful super computer, the IBM Blue Gene [65].
- 11.
Molecular structure of DNA was deduced on the basis of X-ray crystallography [68].
- 12.
- 13.
According to Polanyi, “The theory of boundary conditions recognizes the higher levels of life as forming a hierarchy, each level of which relies for its workings on the principles of the levels below it, even while it itself is irreducible to these lower principles” [37].
- 14.
The “body” here refers to the sum of formative forces. The force of gravity, magnetism, electricity, chemical, and nuclear forces act pointwise, from the center to the periphery. Conceptually, the etheric forces act in the opposite direction, i.e., centripetally. The concept of the ether or life body is not to be confused with the nineteenth-century idea of ether in physics as a hypothetical medium between matter and forces (cf. Footnote 2).
- 15.
Transmembrane proteins, aquaporins, facilitate transport of water and small solutes in virtually all animal/human cell tissues (cf. Sect. 15.2).
- 16.
Nerve cell membrane and action potentials are catabolic, energy-consuming processes. Similarly, neuropeptides are the breakdown products of larger precursor molecules produced in the cell bodies. They are transported along the axons to nerve terminals to be stored, released, and recycled in synaptic vesicles—all of which require significant amount of metabolic energy.
- 17.
Consciousness as well as self-consciousness (in humans) are aspects of brain function that is extinguished during sleep; hence, the term “I” organization is used as the principle which transforms the physical, etheric, and soul organizations into the human physical form.
- 18.
The level of tissue specificity in humans is generally more expressed than in higher mammals where allografts, e.g., organs transplanted within the same species (with immunosuppression), and even xenografts, organs between different species, are known to survive.
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Furst, B. (2020). The Integrative Model of Circulation: A Synthesis. In: The Heart and Circulation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25062-1_25
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