Robert Rosen
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[[Image:Robert Rosen.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Robert Rosen]]
'''Robert Rosen''' ([[27 June]], [[1934]], - [[28 December]], [[1998]], [[Rochester, New York]]) was an [[United States|American]] theoretical [[biologist]] and professor of [[Biophysics]] at [[Dalhousie University]].
== Biography ==
Robert Rosen was born in [[1934]] in [[Brooklyn, New York]]. He studied [[physics]] and theoretical [[biology]], and was a student of physicist and theoretical biologist [[Nicholas Rashevsky]]. He received his PhD in mathematical biology from the [[University of Chicago]] in [[1959]] and remained there until [[1967]].
In [[1967]] Rosen then went to the [[State University of New York]] at Buffalo, holding a joint appointment at the Center for Theoretical Biology. He went to [[Dalhousie University]] in [[1975]] as a Killam Research Professor in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics, and stayed there until his retirement in [[1994]].<ref> [http://communications.medicine.dal.ca/connection/feb1999/rosen.htm In Memory Dr. Robert Rosen], feb 1999, retrieved Oct 2007.</ref>
He was president of the [[Society for General Systems Research]] in [[1980]]
== Work ==
Rosen's research was concerned with the most fundamental aspects of biology. Major themes in the work of Robert Rosen were:
* developing a specific definition of [[complexity]]
* ensuing theoretical framework, now called "Rosennean Complexity". His main focus was the question: "[[what is life?]]" ("why are organisms alive?")
Rosen came to realize that the Newtonian model of physics - the world of mechanisms - was inadequate to describe biological systems; that is, one could not properly answer the question "what is life?" in a Newtonian formalism. Rather than biology being a mere subset of already-known physics, it turned out that biology had profound lessons for physics, and science in general.<ref>[http://www.panmere.com/rosen/rosensum.htm Robert Rosen - Biology, Complexity and Physics<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
=== Notion of the scientific model ===
The clarification of the notion of the scientific [[model (abstract)|model]]: he maintained that modelling is the essence of [[science]]. His book ''Anticipatory Systems'' is mainly concerned with what he termed the [[modelling relationship]]. In [[biology]] he is known by some for a class of relational cell models called (M,R)-systems that he devised. In these systems he tried to capture the minimal organization a material system would have to manifest to justify calling it a [[cell (biology)|cell]].
=== Relational biology ===
However, Rosen's work proposes a methodology he terms "relational biology" (a term he borrows from [[Nicolas Rashevsky]]). Rosen’s "relational biology" maintains that organisms have a distinct quality called "organization" not captured by the language of [[differential equation]]s but using [[category theory]] (a mathematical theory that deals with abstract structures, although his use of this theory is extremely elementary, employing little more than the definition of category and a few very simple properties of categories). This study, Rosen says, must be independent from which constitutes a living system.
He goes very far in this direction claiming that "when studying an organized material system, throw away the [[matter]] and keep the underlying organization". He makes this claim based on his view that up until he came into the picture, biologists were simply examining the material a biological system was made of, and simply ignoring the way it was organized. Relational biology concludes that: (a) "organization" is "that attribute of a natural system which codes into the form of an abstract block diagram” where "abstract block diagram" means a set of arrows and points, (b) physics is unable to capture life essence due the use of a mathematical formalism which is unable to express functions (a [[teleological]] notion introduced by Rosen as the behavioral difference between an organism with a "heterogonous state" and one without it).
=== Biochemistry ===
Rosen also rejects some aspects of mainstream interpretations of [[biochemistry]] and [[biology]]. He objects the idea that the functional role of a [[protein]] can be investigated purely using the sequence of [[amino acid]]s, due to intrinsic syntactic limitations of the habitual language of chemistry (graphs of atoms and molecules).
Based on this thesis, Rosen says that is impossible to find either an [[algorithm]] that can calculate the three-dimensional conformation of a protein directly or the active site of it, although he made absolutely no attempt to formalize the problem in such a manner that would be required to prove such a claim. "If phenotype is chemistry, as mandated by the sequence hypotheses", he says, "that ''chemistry'' is not the familiar contemporary chemistry we find in books".<ref name="life"> All quotes are from ''Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life''.</ref>
In the case of biology, Rosen maintains that "Darwinian [[evolution]]" doesn’t provide any kind of causality or entailment, and without them, "turn evolution, and hence biology, into a collection of pure historical chronicles, like tables of random numbers, or stock exchange quotations". He maintains that the denial of "evolutionary entailments" represents an “excuse itself from science through its absolute denial”. The proposed solution for this problem is embracing entailment in evolution, citing the works of [[Ernst Haeckel]] and his idea of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, [[René Thom]]’s ''Catastrophe Theory'' and [[D’Arcy Thompson]]’s ''On Growth and Form''".<ref name="life"/>
Questions about Rosen's arguments were raised in a paper authored by Christopher Landauer and Kirstie L. Bellman which claims that some of the mathematical formulations used by Rosen are problematic. They also claim that the idea that it is possible to establish a correspondence relation between languages and ideal or abstract entities different but related to physical objects has been repudiated in a broad sense from disciplines like [[linguistics]] and [[philosophy of language]].
== See also ==
* [[Autopoiesis]]
== Publications ==
Rosen has written several books and articles. A selection: <ref> A complete [http://users.viawest.net/~keirsey/rosenbiblio.html Bibliography] of Robert Rosens publications.</ref>
* 1970, ''Dynamical Systems Theory in Biology'' New York: Wiley Interscience.
* 1970, ''Optimality Principles'', Rosen Enterprises
* 1978, ''Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems'', Elsevier Science Ltd,
* 1985, ''Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations''. Pergamon Press.
* 1991, ''Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life'', Columbia University Press
Published posthumously:
* 2000, ''Essays on Life Itself'', Columbia University Press.
* 2003, ''Rosennean Complexity'', Rosen Enterprises.
* 2003, ''The Limits of the Limits Of Science'', Rosen Enterprises
== References ==
<references/>
== External links ==
* [http://www.rosen-enterprises.com Rosen Enterprises] The Rosen family website providing biographical information and reprints of the work of Robert Rosen.
* [http://www.panmere.com/''Robert Rosen: Complexity and Life''] A website exploring the work of Rosen.
* [http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/Rosenreq.html Robert Rosen: June 27, 1934 — December 30, 1998] by Aloisius Louie.
* [http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/PPRISS3.html ''Robert Rosen: The well posed question and its answer: why are organisms different from machines?''] An essay by Donald C. Mikulecky.
* [http://content.aip.org/APCPCS/v627/i1/59_1.html Paper] by Christopher Landauer and Kirstie L. Bellman criticising some of Rosen's mathematical formulations, followed by attempts to improve the formulations.
[[Category:1934 births|Rosen, Robert]]
[[Category:1998 deaths|Rosen, Robert]]
[[Category:Dalhousie University faculty|Rosen, Robert]]
[[Category:Systems scientists|Rosen]]
[[Category:Theoretical biologists|Rosen, Robert]]
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