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“We have only scratched the surface of the problems of biological complexity. They won’t be solved merely by collecting more data. We are awash with data. What is needed is a framework of theory within which we can see our way through the forest of data to find the clues to understanding complexity. I see philosophy as playing a major role here since what is required is a mind-shift away from the naïve reductionist paradigm that dominated twentieth century biology. We need reductionist science. But we don’t need the naïve and exclusive philosophy that often accompanies it. Reduction and integration in biology go together, rather as they do also in the mathematics of calculus.”
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Suggested Readings by Denis Noble
DiFrancesco, D., & Noble, D. (1985). A model of cardiac electrical activity incorporating ionic pumps and concentration changes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 307, 353–398.
Noble, D. (2006). The music of life. Biology beyond the genes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Noble, D. (2016). Dance to the tune of life: Biological relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Noble, D. (2017). Systems Biology Beyond the Genome. In: Green, S. (eds) Philosophy of Systems Biology. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47000-9_21
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