The semiotic factory of the cell and molecular ecology:
Dedicated to the centennial of Paul Alfred Weiss
Brauckmann, S.
University of Münster, Elisabeth-Ney-Str. 1, D-48147 Münster, Germany
My talk will briefly discuss the input-output factory called the cell
as investigated by the cell engineer Paul Alfred Weiss and further
elaborated to the molecular ecology. His experiments on growth and
development of neuronal cells led to a study of inductive interactions
between tissues as contact effects. Further, he investigated organ-specific
antibodies as possible catalysts in growth and differentiation of the
respective organs caused by a cooperative product of cell and cell matrix
interaction. One experimental data was that neuronal cells grow by
exploitation of their own internal balance, what he called the
manufacturing of the cell. For him the cell as a whole required a
concept of simultaneous synthesis rather than the sequential processing of
reductive molecular biology. Firstly, the cellular unit was interpreted in
terms of a system theoretical approach which later was re-formulated by the
cell group. In his theoretical model, cellular constitution based on an
orderly channeling, semifluid paracrystals and topographic inequalities in
the cell are the gadgets to dynamical structure. Weiss' theoretical biology
aimed to bridge molecular and cell (organismic) biology by the collective
behavior of molecular populations (cells). His dualistic concept, according
to which discrete units (molecules, macromolecular complexes, cells, or cell
groups) are enmeshed in, and in interplay with, an organized reference
system of unified dynamics of the collective of which they are members will
be interpreted by biosemiotics. My objective here is to show to which extent
a biosemiotic approach is rational for a sound theory of biology in general.
| LOCATION |
DATE |
TIME |
| Lecture Hall II |
Monday, April 6 |
10:20 am |