Abstract

It has been tacitly assumed that certain fundamental “laws” of science have the same meaning and significance in the different scientific disciplines. Outside of quantum physics the law of causality was regarded as such a concept which was most generally applicable in the description of the systems of nature. However, the role of causality in recent research in biology seems not quite clear. There an explanation of the specific properties of biological systems does not assume the form of a simple law such as a mathematical expression relating different states of one and the same system. Rather it is attempted to show how the properties of the system as a whole are established by the specific interaction of the parts of the system.