Evolution, the Logic of Biology

By focusing on the cellular mechanisms that underlie ontogeny, phylogeny and regeneration of complex physiologic traits, Evolution, the Logic of Biology demonstrates the use of homeostasis, the fundamental principle of physiology and medicine, as the unifying mechanism for evolution as all of biology. The homeostasis principle can be used to understand how environmental stressors have affected physiologic mechanisms to generate condition-specific novelty through cellular mechanisms. Evolution, the Logic of Biology allows the reader to understand the vertebrate life-cycle as an intergenerational continuum in support of effective, on-going environmental adaptation. By understanding the principles of physiology from their fundamental unicellular origins, culminating in modern-day metazoans, the reader as student, researcher or practitioner will be encouraged to think in terms of the prevention of disease, rather than in the treatment of disease as the eradication of symptoms. By tracing the ontogeny and phylogeny of this and other phenotypic homologies, one can perceive and understand how complex physiologic traits have mechanistically evolved from their simpler ancestral and developmental origins as cellular structures and functions, providing a logic of biology for the first time. Evolution, the Logic of Biology will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers studying evolutionary development, medicine and biology, anthropology, comparative and developmental biology, genetics and genomics, and physiology.

By focusing on the cellular mechanisms that underlie ontogeny, phylogeny and regeneration of complex physiologic traits, Evolution, the Logic of Biology demonstrates the use of homeostasis, the fundamental principle of physiology and medicine, as the unifying mechanism for evolution as all of biology. The homeostasis principle can be used to understand how environmental stressors have affected physiologic mechanisms to generate condition-specific novelty through cellular mechanisms.Evolution, the Logic of Biology allows the reader to understand the vertebrate life-cycle as an intergenerational continuum in support of effective, on-going environmental adaptation. By understanding the principles of physiology from their fundamental unicellular origins, culminating in modern-day metazoans, the reader as student, researcher or practitioner will be encouraged to think in terms of the prevention of disease, rather than in the treatment of disease as the eradication of symptoms.By tracing the ontogeny and phylogeny of this and other phenotypic homologies, one can perceive and understand how complex physiologic traits have mechanistically evolved from their simpler ancestral and developmental origins as cellular structures and functions, providing a logic of biology for the first time.Evolution, the Logic of Biology will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers studying evolutionary development, medicine and biology, anthropology, comparative and developmental biology, genetics and genomics, and physiology.

Preface ix1 Introduction 12 On the Fractal Nature of Evolution 133 The Historic Perspective on Paracrinology and Evolution as Lead-ins to a Systems Biology Approach 234 Evolution of Adipocyte Differentiation Related Protein, or "Oh, the Places You'll Go" - Theodore Geissel, Aka Dr Seuss 375 Evolutionary Ontology and Epistemology 496 Calcium-Lipid Epistasis: Like Ouroboros, the Snake, Catching its Tail! 657 The Lung Alveolar Lipofibroblast: An Evolutionary Strategy Against Neonatal Hyperoxic Lung Injury 778 Bio-Logic 859 Cell Signaling as the Basis for all of Biology 10710 Information + Negentropy + Homeostasis = Evolution 11911 Vertical Integration of Cytoskeletal Function from Yeast to Human 12512 Yet Another Bite of the "Evolutionary" Apple 13513 On Eliminating the Subjectivity from Biology: Predictions 16514 The Predictive Value of the Cellular Approach to Evolution 17315 Homeostasis as the Mechanism of Evolution 18916 On the Evolution of Development 20117 A Central Theory of Biology 21918 Implications of Evolutionary Physiology for Astrobiology 23119 Pleiotropy Reveals the Mechanism of Evolutionary Novelty 25720 Meta-Darwinism 267Index 279