Book contents
- Integrative Bioinformatics for Biomedical Big Data
- Integrative Bioinformatics for Biomedical Big Data
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 No-Boundary Thinking
- 2 Artificial Intelligence Approaches to No-Boundary Thinking
- 3 No-Boundary Thinking in Undergraduate Bioinformatics Education
- 4 No-Boundary Course Developments
- 5 No-Boundary Thinking for Transcriptomics and Proteomics Big Data
- 6 Pharmacogenomics
- 7 The Ethical Status of an AI
- 8 Computational Thinking and No-Boundary Thinking
- 9 Carving Nature at the Joints: Which Joints?
- Index
- References
9 - Carving Nature at the Joints: Which Joints?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2023
- Integrative Bioinformatics for Biomedical Big Data
- Integrative Bioinformatics for Biomedical Big Data
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 No-Boundary Thinking
- 2 Artificial Intelligence Approaches to No-Boundary Thinking
- 3 No-Boundary Thinking in Undergraduate Bioinformatics Education
- 4 No-Boundary Course Developments
- 5 No-Boundary Thinking for Transcriptomics and Proteomics Big Data
- 6 Pharmacogenomics
- 7 The Ethical Status of an AI
- 8 Computational Thinking and No-Boundary Thinking
- 9 Carving Nature at the Joints: Which Joints?
- Index
- References
Summary
One fundamental project of biology is to determine which groups of organisms are “the same” and which are different, for taxonomic purposes but more fundamentally so that one can make general, meaningful claims about specific groups. Traditional bifurcating taxonomies have been and remain useful. However, what was designed to name unchanging “natural kinds” of relatively large organisms with distinct morphologies is not adequate for grouping and dividing very small organisms, reticulated histories, endosymbiosis, horizontal gene transfer, asexual reproduction, or ecosystems. Biological explanations need to be flexible enough to account for hierarchically embedded processes and structures at vastly different scales, from the molecular to the global. Modern biology has moved beyond naming things, and biological explanations now require more sophisticated ontologies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Integrative Bioinformatics for Biomedical Big DataA No-Boundary Thinking Approach, pp. 156 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023