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Life is confronted with computation problems in a variety of domains including animal behavior, single-cell behavior, and embryonic development. Yet we currently do not know of a naturally existing biological system that is capable of…
This essay inquires how mathematical beings could be inserted into the architecture of modes of existence proposed by Bruno Latour in the framework of his pluralist and renewed ontology of the modern world. After a description of the…
The Universe contains everything that exists, including life. And all that exists, including life, obeys universal physical laws. Do those laws then give adequate foundations for a complete explanation of biological phenomena? We discuss…
This article presents a naturalist approach to cognition understood as a network of info-computational, autopoietic processes in living systems. It provides a conceptual framework for the unified view of cognition as evolved from the…
As the frontiers of biology become increasingly interdisciplinary, the physics education community has engaged in ongoing efforts to make physics classes more relevant to life sciences majors. These efforts are complicated by the many…
The idea that all life on earth traces back to a common beginning dates back at least to Charles Darwin's {\em Origin of Species}. Ever since, biologists have tried to piece together parts of this `tree of life' based on what we can observe…
In computer science, we can theoretically neatly separate transmission and processing of information, hardware and software, and programs and their inputs. This is much more intricate in biology, Nevertheless, I argue that Shannon's concept…
The organism is a fundamental concept in biology. However there is no universally accepted, formal, and yet broadly applicable definition of what an organism is. Here we introduce a candidate definition. We adopt the view that the…
The fundamental impasses and ruptures in various domains of the canonical, unitary science, or the 'end of science', become the more and more evident. The natural unity of being is recovered within a universal nonperturbative method leading…
Finding general principles underlying brain function has been appealing to scientists. Indeed, in some branches of science like physics and chemistry (and to some degree biology) a general theory often can capture the essence of a wide…
Economies are complex man-made systems where organisms and markets interact according to motivations and principles not entirely understood yet. The increasing dissatisfaction with the postulates of traditional economics i.e. perfectly…
Many living and physical systems such as cell aggregates, tissues or bacterial colonies behave as unconventional systems of particles that are strongly constrained by volume exclusion and shape interactions. Understanding how these…
Modeling and simulation (M&S) has revolutionized the way modern engineered products are designed, tested and evaluated. Yet modeling and simulation is much less frequently applied in the study of natural biological and active matter…
Mathematics is usually regarded as a kind of language. The essential behavior of physical phenomena can be expressed by mathematical laws, providing descriptions and predictions. In the present essay I argue that, although mathematics can…
Biologists rely heavily on the language of information, coding, and transmission that is commonplace in the field of information theory as developed by Claude Shannon, but there is open debate about whether such language is anything more…
A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course. Multiple survey measures have attempted to measure shifts in…
Being mathematics a natural language to Mankind and to physics, it must be constantly adapted to our necessities and our natural perception. Then, mathematical concepts are not absolute to reality. Although mathematical theories are…
Biology is considered here as an "emergent science" in the sense of Anderson and of Laughlin and Pines. It is demonstrated that a straightforward mathematical definition of "biological system" is useful in showing how biology differs in…
Redox biology underpins signalling, metabolism, immunity, and adaptation, yet lacks a unifying theoretical framework capable of formalising structure, function, and dynamics. Current interpretations rely on descriptive catalogues of…
Schroedinger's book 'What is Life?' is widely credited for having played a crucial role in development of molecular and cellular biology. My essay revisits the issues raised by this book from the modern perspective of epigenetics and…