3. Rene Thom Importance of Theoretical Biology

Rene Thom is a mathematician who made "Catastrophe Theory." Although I think that he wanted to explain biological phenomena by using his catastrophe theory, the majority of scientists respected only the mathematical sides and did not understand his mind. However, it is said that Rene Thom continued asserting, until his end, as follows: "it is important to analyze obscure biological phenomena by using logical concepts as if I did so."

Remember the title of his book to know his mind. It is "Structural Stability and Morphogenesis." What do you think after reading the title? Reading the title leads me to feel his mind as follows: a living thing forms its structure to obtain its own stability as strong as possible. To obtain this stability, a living thing uses nonlinear change: catastrophe. Likewise, he must think that many phenomena observed in even living things can be explained by these logical concepts.

If so, how can we use his catastrophic theory to explain the mechanisms that control a human body? Catastrophic change indicates abrupt change, which always makes a pair with not-abrupt change. This means that a movement cannot obtain its own stability without having catastrophic change. Likewise, because a human body is created as a system having catastrophic changes, it has its own stability. That is, catastrophe is essential for a human body to obtain its stability.

Importantly, the stability in a human body plays a major role in maintaining health and in causing disease. A human body is a system having its own stability, on the basis of which a human body maintains the life. For instance, when a human body decreases the stability, it aggressively causes disease to regain the good stability. Thus, whenever we medical researchers check how a human body causes disease, they should always consider how a human body obtains its stability. Of course, we should take notice of the existence of catastrophic change behind the stability.

All in all, we medical researchers should notice that Rene Thom had already indicated clearly the important point about disease. Although mathematics appears not to be closely related to medical science, Rene Thom confirmed that various phenomena seen in a human body can be analyzed by mathematical concepts. In fact, I feel that Rene Thom did hope medical researchers to understand that mathematics can play an important role in analyzing disease.

To Rene Thom.
Please keep a very close watch on my medical theory from the heaven. Please allow me to do what you wanted to do.
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