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Oscillations are observed in all branches of science and culture, ranging from the behavior of ele-mentary particles, atoms, molecules in simple chemical or physical systems or even in complex organisms, up to oscillations of the behavior…
One of the basic assumptions implicit in the way physics is usually done is that all causation flows in a bottom up fashion, from micro to macro scales. However this is wrong in many cases in biology, and in particular in the way the brain…
The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…
The intricacy and diversity inherent in living organisms present a formidable obstacle to the establishment of a universally accepted definition. Life manifests in a multitude of forms, exhibiting various attributes such as growth,…
Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for conventional scientific approaches and why they…
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…
A common feature of the recent calls for reform of the undergraduate biology curriculum has been for better coordination between biology and the courses from the allied disciplines of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Physics has lagged…
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
Inside every living cell is the cytoplasm: a fluid mixture of thousands of different macromolecules, predominantly proteins. This mixture is where most of the biochemistry occurs that enables living cells to function, and it is perhaps the…
Biological systems, unlike physical or chemical systems, are characterized by the very inhomogeneous distribution of their components. The immune system, in particular, is notable for self-organizing its structure. Classically, the dynamics…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…
The problem of understanding fundamental physical constants was discussed in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Here, I show that a new insight comes from condensed matter physics and liquid physics in particular: fundamental…
The transformation of organic molecules into the simplest self-replicating living system,a microorganism, is accomplished from a unique event or rare events that occurred early in the Universe. The subsequent dispersal on cosmic scales and…
With the completion of human genome mapping, the focus of scientists seeking to explain the biological complexity of living systems is shifting from analyzing the individual components (such as a particular gene or biochemical reaction) to…
Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These systems are driven by external energy input for example…
Phase transitions, such as the freezing of water and the magnetisation of a ferromagnet upon lowering the ambient temperature, are familiar physical phenomena. Interestingly, such a collective change of behaviour at a phase transition is…
The paper discusses the problem of demarcation between the dimensions of natural and the human sciences in contemporary cosmology. In spite of a common presumption that cosmology is a natural science, the specificity of its alleged subject…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…