| On the Stability and Robustness of Biological Systems (2005) | |||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||
| Biological systems are often remarkably robust to changing environmental conditions. This property can, however, not be generalised simplistically. In fact, in all biological systems, certain parameters are subject to tight control, and even small deviations result in malfunction or even death of the system. Examples for such parameters include the temperature of the human brain, as well as that of bee hives and ant-hills, blood glucose levels, and more. In another perspective, biological systems are not entirely robust against failure of modules either. For example, certain failures in the brain result in mental failures such as neglect, and certain genetic failures result in cancer. Biological systems are thus not robust in an unspecific, generic quantitative sense, according to which the total number of states in which a biological systems functions is greater (by orders of magnitude) than the number of states permissible to technical systems. Robustness in a completely general sense is precluded by the No Free Lunch theorem. The key to the autonomy of biological systems is that such parameters are controlled by the system itself. Thus, while the cardinality of the set of permissible states may not be larger for biological systems than for technical ones, biological systems interact with their environment in a way that increases their chance of encountering favourable conditions in the future. Technical systems, on the other hand, tend to consume their resources, and to incorporate | |||||||||||||||
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