Oblivious Origins of Systems Biology
Biological processes, properties, trajectories and topologies are studied under a unique lens in the world of systems biology. Mihajlo Mesarović, a Serbian scientist and professor of systems engineering and mathematics, is credited with introducing the term “systems biology” in 1968. Mesarović used the term to explore the use of systems theory to understand biological systems.
There are opinions that Ludwig Von Bertalanffy who proposed open systems theory to explain life phenomena pioneered the combinations of systems theory and biology. Karl Ludwig Von Bertalanffy was an Austrian biologist himself. In his framework, systems biology spread across systems theory and fields such as cybernetics. Bertalanffy proposed that the classical laws of thermodynamics might be applied to closed systems, but not necessarily to “open systems” such as living things. In this model, the open systems are characterised by negative entropy. This property explains organismic growth, differentiation and increasing complexity.
The concept of entropy and second law of thermodynamics requires a lot of radical reinterpretations in context of our nascent understanding about the contours of statistical mechanics of nature. The word entropy itself is a bit problematic when we unravel itself etymologic origins.
