Abstract
An important activity of biological scientists involves making measurements on living organisms. In the past, biologists focused primarily on the static aspects of life. For example, the recognition that some plants are benign while others are poisonous surely provided the impetus for learning how to tell useful plants from dangerous ones.
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Notes
- 1.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English physicist and mathematician, formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation and invented the calculus.
- 2.
We have arbitrarily identified the onset of the mathematical studies of nonlinear biological systems in the laboratory with the development of the Hodgkin–Huxley equations of the neuron [347].
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It follows from these observations that the spiking threshold depends on the time that the neuron last produced an action potential, and hence on the past history of the neuron [567]. In this way, a neuron can be said to remember its past. Most mathematical and computer modeling studies ignore this effect of the relatively refractory period. For notable exceptions, see [129].
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Milton, J., Ohira, T. (2021). Science and the Mathematics of Black Boxes. In: Mathematics as a Laboratory Tool. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69579-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69579-8_1
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