ArticleInterface focus2012
A theory of biological relativity: no privileged level of causation.
Article in Interface focus, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 117 papers.
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Who cites it
117 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Permissive and instructive causality: integrating biological and environmental factors in mental health.Psychological medicine · 2026Review
- The cardiac pacemakers: A paradigm of robustness in evolutionary biology.The Journal of physiology · 2026Review
- The principles of systems biology.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Precision Medicine Through Network Language: Integrating Clinical Insight and Data Expertise.Genes · 2026Review
- Review
- Polarization as a Process: The Potential of Process Ontology for Understanding Cellular Symmetry Breaking.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Molecular Homeostasis Failure and Pathological Integration: Bridging Molecular Perturbations with Disease Phenotypes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Beyond networks: Toward adaptive models of biological complexity.Physics of life reviews · 2026Review
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part One.Biological theory · 2026Article
- Life as a Categorical Information-Handling System: An Evolutionary Information-Theoretic Model of the Holobiont.Biology · 2026Review
- Mapping life's disparity and evolutionary constraints in a geometric complexity space.Science advances · 2026Article
- Quantifying emergent complexity.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Mapping the multigenomic human system: structural asymmetry and interface gaps in host-exogenous biological interactions.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Self-organization and circular causation as synergetic foundations of social interaction: a multilayer network perspective.Frontiers in network physiology · 2026Article
- How should we teach homeostasis? Filling the gaps and envisioning the future.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- From prediction to adaptation: rethinking the epistemic role of inhalation toxicology.Frontiers in toxicology · 2026Article
57 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Must higher level biological processes always be derivable from lower level data and mechanisms, as assumed by the idea that an organism is completely defined by its genome? Or are higher level properties necessarily also causes of lower level behaviour, involving actions and interactions both ways? This article uses modelling of the heart, and its experimental basis, to show that downward causation is necessary and that this form of causation can be represented as the influences of initial and boundary conditions on the solutions of the differential equations used to represent the lower level processes. These insights are then generalized. A priori, there is no privileged level of causation. The relations between this form of 'biological relativity' and forms of relativity in physics are discussed. Biological relativity can be seen as an extension of the relativity principle by avoiding the assumption that there is a privileged scale at which biological functions are determined.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.