Complexity in biology

The ultimate aim of scientific research is to understand the natural world. In order to achieve this goal, Western science has relied on different cognitive strategies, including simplification, both in terms of analysis and explanation. As the British natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) put it, “Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” In a way, examples of simplification include using idealized models, such as a ‘perfect sphere rolling down a smooth plane in a vacuum’; conducting experiments in a strictly controlled environment such as the laboratory; analysing complex systems by reducing them to their individual parts; and generally by using a linear and deterministic concept of how the world, including life, works.The French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596–1650) was the first to introduce reductionism to Western thinking and philosophy. According to his view, the world can be regarded as a clockwork mechanism; to understand it, one need only investigate the parts and then reassemble each component to recreate the whole. Descartes' work was expanded by Newton (1643–1727) and ultimately culminated in the Principia Mathematica in 1687—one of the most influential science books ever written—in which Newton further advanced the idea of a ‘clockwork universe’.Since the time of Newton, classical mechanics has been regarded as the foundation of scientific research. Scientists, including biologists, have adopted the Newtonian approach both at the ontological level—in terms of their conception of the world and the things of which it is made—and the epistemological level—in terms of their approach to understanding those things. The Newtonian epistemology, in fact, states that scientific knowledge has to provide an objective representation of the external world. The world's apparent complexity can be resolved by analysis and reducing phenomena to their simplest components. “Once you …