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The Immune System and Its Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alfred I. Tauber
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Abstract

In biology, the ‘ecological orientation’ rests on a commitment to examining systems, and the conceptual challenge of defining that system now employs techniques and concepts adapted from diverse disciplines (i.e., systems philosophy, cybernetics, information theory, computer science) that are applied to biological simulations and model building. Immunology has joined these efforts, and the question posed here is whether the discipline will remain committed to its theoretical concerns framed by the notions of protecting an insular self, an entity demarcated from its environment, or will shift its focus of interest to a wider context. An ecological perspective emphasizes the interchange between the organism and its environment, the processing of information, and the regulation arising from responses to this larger context. Moving from the first attempts at modeling the immune system as a closed network, immunologists have joined the general interest in systems analysis, and that move might portend a significant shift to an open, more holistic consideration of immune regulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 224 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am indebted to Andrea Grignolio for assistance in researching the history of immune models and information theory in immunology, a subject he is preparing for publication. I thank Richard Gunderman of Indiana University for alerting me to the term ‘ecotone’ and its meanings, as well as critical comments offered by Eshel ben Jacob and Zvi Grossman. Portions of this paper have been modified from a previous publication (Tauber 2005).

References

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