摘要翻译：
理论生物学家罗伯特·罗森提出了一种极具独创性的方法来研究“生命是什么？”这个生物学最基本的问题。考虑到罗森对数学的广泛应用，他的思想很少在数学模型中得到实现，这似乎令人惊讶。一方面，罗森传播的关系模型忽略了组件的潜在结构细节，而专注于生物系统元素之间的关系，这是根据“扔掉物理，保留组织”的座右铭。罗森强烈反对机械模型，他把机械模型与一种强烈的还原论联系在一起，这可能阻止了数学建模者在他们自己的工作中采用他的思想。另一方面，罗森对他的模型框架(M，R)系统的介绍是高度抽象的，这使得很难理解这种方法如何应用于具体的生物学问题。本文分析了罗森的数学以及与他的哲学思想有关的方面。研究表明，Rosen的关系模型是一种具有特定假设的特殊类型的机制模型，而不是一种排除机制模型的不同类型的模型。通过与现有网络生物学文献的比较，研究了相关模型的优缺点。最后，认为罗森对生命的定义“生物体接近有效因果关系”应作为一个有待检验的假设，并提出了如何在数学模型中实现这一假设的设想。
---
英文标题：
《An applied mathematician's perspective on Rosennean Complexity》
---
作者：
Ivo Siekmann
---
最新提交年份：
2017
---
分类信息：

一级分类：Quantitative Biology        数量生物学
二级分类：Other Quantitative Biology        其他定量生物学
分类描述：Work in quantitative biology that does not fit into the other q-bio classifications
不适合其他q-bio分类的定量生物学工作
--

---
英文摘要：
  The theoretical biologist Robert Rosen developed a highly original approach for investigating the question "What is life?", the most fundamental problem of biology. Considering that Rosen made extensive use of mathematics it might seem surprising that his ideas have only rarely been implemented in mathematical models. On the one hand, Rosen propagates relational models that neglect underlying structural details of the components and focus on relationships between the elements of a biological system, according to the motto "throw away the physics, keep the organisation". Rosen's strong rejection of mechanistic models that he implicitly associates with a strong form of reductionism might have deterred mathematical modellers from adopting his ideas for their own work. On the other hand Rosen's presentation of his modelling framework, (M,R) systems, is highly abstract which makes it hard to appreciate how this approach could be applied to concrete biological problems. In this article, both the mathematics as well as those aspects of Rosen's work are analysed that relate to his philosophical ideas. It is shown that Rosen's relational models are a particular type of mechanistic model with specific underlying assumptions rather than a different kind of model that excludes mechanistic models. The strengths and weaknesses of relational models are investigated by comparison with current network biology literature. Finally, it is argued that Rosen's definition of life, "organisms are closed to efficient causation", should be considered as a hypothesis to be tested and ideas how this postulate could be implemented in mathematical models are presented.
---
PDF链接：
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03322