The Biological Consequences of the Computational World: Mathematical Reflections on Cancer Biology

Abstract

The role of continua has been clear since antiquity in the mathematical approaches to physics, while discrete manifolds were brought to the limelight mostly by Quantum and Information Theories, in the XX century. We first recall how theorizing and measuring radically change in physics when using discrete vs. continuous mathematical manifolds. It will follow that the reference to discrete structures and digital information is far from neutral in knowledge construction. In biology, in particular, the introduction of information as a new observable on discrete data types has been promoting a dramatic reorganization of the tools for knowledge. We briefly analyze the origin and the nature, then some consequences of the bias thus induced in life sciences, with particular emphasis on research on cancer. We finally summarize new theoretical frames that propose different directions as for the organizing principles for biological thinking and experimenting, including in cancer research. Cancer is now viewed as an organismal, tissue based issue, according to the perspective proposed in (Sonnenschein, Soto, 1999; Baker, 2015).