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A Commentary on a Workshop ‘ To Reveal the Foundational Concepts of Immune Regulation ’ (i.e. Tolerance)
Author(s) -
Cohn M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.934
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1365-3083
pISSN - 0300-9475
DOI - 10.1111/sji.12536
Subject(s) - conceptualization , epistemology , context (archaeology) , cognitive science , sociology , engineering ethics , psychology , computer science , philosophy , biology , engineering , artificial intelligence , paleontology
A summary of the workshop with its laudatory goal ‘ to reveal the foundational concepts in immunology’ was recently published in SJI with an invitation to outsiders to comment. In the end, a foundational concept is one upon which we can all agree. This requires debate and meaningful experimentation. The goal of this commentary is to provide some of that. Most of immunology is description of an observation (i.e. a fact). However, what ties all the facts together as a discipline is theory or conceptualization that gives a general context to observation and predicts the next step. This is what is meant by ‘ foundational concepts’ .