CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 387 Clinical Medicine Insights DOI:https://doi.org/10.52845/CMI/2023-4-2-2 CMI 04 (02), 387-392 (2023) ISSN (O) 2694-4626 RESEARCH ARTICLE The Biophysical Modelling of the System Theory Janos Vincze, Gabriella Vincze-Tiszay Health Human International Environment Foundation, Budapest, Hungary *Corresponding Author: Janos Vincze Introduction Biophysics is a border science which deals with physical processes taking place in the living organisms and systems as well as with tools and methods used of their study. Biophysics strikes for the revelation and recognition of physical phenomena, processes, laws etc. implied in biological problems. The biophysicist pursues studies with the methods of physics without leaving the soil of biology. For this very reason, a synthesis of the mentioned disciplines’ way of thinking, imaginations, concepts and working methods can be met in the biophysics. One may safely say today that living material is composed of exactly the same constituents and the interactions between the constituent particles are of the same nature as we see them in the lifeless world. Life is not the consequence of non specific atomic characteristics but a concomitant of – by overall natural laws – highly organized, atoms otherwise occurring in the nature. 1 In the course of biological investigations, the tendency can be observed that for the better understanding of phenomena one makes use of the results of sciences governed by more and more general laws. Biology starts with the observation, classification of living creatures but the study of life phenomena needs already explanation, generalization. Advance has been meant by applying chemistry as biochemistry. Although biochemistry can register immense results its scope remains limited. It has been found e.g. that proteins as enzymes perform various tasks in the living cells, it was also stated that DNA carries the information responsible for the inheritance but a Abstract Modelling in this case should just complicate the situation. In this sense there are explicitly good models but it’s well known that there are also wrong things which, by modification, may work well. In this case model has given even more than it was originally for seen. In this respect, it’s without doubt that the biological modelling is a useful way of collaboration between the biologist and physicist. The system is a fundamental concept which is not defined. The biophysical approximation of the life processes leads always to the application of some kind of physical model. This definition has three essential factors. In the first place, it should need an object to be realized by the system. Secondly, it is necessary for the components a well-defined settlement to be arranged. At last the information about the distribution of energy and matter according to the programme. The hierarchy of the systems will be built up according to a spiral line expanding in breadth and depth towards the infinity. One important mode to construct general systems is if we recognize the common phenomena occurring in the different specialized sciences and construct the systems applicable for such phenomena. Let’s sketch out the hierarchy of the systems according to Boulding. Key words: biophysical modelling, system, hierarchy of the systems Copyright : © 2021 The Authors. Published by Medical Editor and Educational Research Publishers Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/lic enses/by- nc-nd/4.0/). https://creativecommons.org/lic%20enses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/lic%20enses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 388 CMI JOURNAL Janos Vincze et al. deeper comprehension has been achieved by the help of physics. By studying the X-ray diffraction image of the DNA-molecules, the double helix structure has been discovered and found explanatory for the hereditary mechanism. The X- ray diffraction study has brought about the recognition that protein molecules fulfill their tasks on the basis of their well-defined configuration. One hasn’t found so far another physical modality which could have implied any more unequivocal, decisive brakethrough. 2 Modelling A biological model is called that partial set to be studied which has been selected from the set of our available knowledge, assumptions as well as from the results of the already completed biological experiments and investigations. Hence the starting point of every modelling is some sort of an observable phenomenon. Modelling in simplest formulation can be conceived as a sharp polarized inquiry of the respective phenomenon. There exist systems where the simplest model is the system itself. Modelling in this case should just complicate the situation. In this sense there are explicitly good models but it’s well known that there are also wrong things which, by modification, may work well. Model is evidently a model and not the reality but the abstracted copy of it from which we try to conclude to the reality and in the case of any mismatch we have to change the model. 3 The biologist has to abstract parts of the biological process substantial from the point of view of the model and has to select those essential points the physicist willingly accepts and in which he will be ready to collaborate. Hereupon as a rule, the physicist used to suggest an already existing model of the wide arsenal of the physics applied for the description of natural phenomena. If there is a physical model disposable for the biological phenomenon then it will bring up a lot of possibilities offered by the physics to the biology which, of course, must be subjected to biological- logical judgement. From many of them turns out that it’s worth dealing with and being subjected to biological experimentation. If our supposition has been justified by the biological experiment then we have got new knowledge in the long run. In this case model has given even more than it was originally for seen. In this respect, it’s without doubt that the biological modelling is a useful way of collaboration between the biologist and physicist. 4 We should steadily see also the strict limitations of the modelling. Part of these limits is intensive and is best perceptible with the comparison that if we have a closer, focused look at an object it will necessarily get blurred or even disappear all beyond the scope of our observation. The other part of the limitations is extensive, the majority of the today’s models cannot take into consideration more but some distincted features. The mesh of the extensive and intensive limits, the complexity, underlines even more the necessity of modelling but it assures the conditions of the controllable advancement in a complicated spiritual (intellectual, mental) medium. Forming a biophysical model is not the task of the biologist or physicist alone, a good model can successfully constructed only by common, collective-work. This is typically the task of the biophysicist and a problem which falls within the competence of this discipline. Model is always an approximation, the user of the model has to take into consideration that he can approach only the absolute truth just through the endless series of relative truths. For this reason, he performs certain neglects in advance, he disregards certain things. The model is nothing but an abstracted phenomenon, a momentarily stopped biological system. 5 As soon as it has got a model it ceased to be alive but this should not exclude a model be built and the results of the biophysics be applied. The biophysical approximation of the life processes leads always to the application of some kind of physical model. This model usually carries just some features of the process but complies the requirement of the accuracy. Accuracy is nothing else but to search for axiom for a complicated life process and it‘s usually a great deal of work. Exactly from these difficulties germinates biophysics. The development of the biophysical science can be appraised on that we succeed in the investigation of ever complicated processes. Accordingly, in the research one must declare the axiom of the deductive theories achieved by the study of the processes. You should clearly start with very simple examples. Again, the more CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 389 CMI JOURNAL Janos Vincze et al. complicated life processes we tackle, the higher we raise the scientific level of the biophysics. The system The expression „system” has been used for a wide range of phenomena. Thus we speak of numerical systems, planetary systems, communication systems, regulatory systems, biological systems, teaching systems, political systems etc. Part of these are conceptual constructions, the other part comprises physical entities. 6 The system itself is a fundamental conception of which we don’t give any definition, instead it will be circumscribed. Temporarily, the following wide and broad circumscription could have been done for the system: any conceptual or physical entity made up of parts depending on each other. According to Bertalanffy: systems are collectives of such interacting elements for which certain system laws can be applied. This characterization would not work as a kind of circulus vitiosus if an independent definition of the system laws were available but there was not. The system is a fundamental concept which is not defined. The behaviour of the system is consisted of the complexity of processes mutually connected with each other and characterized by function ties. Generally spoken a function link between processes there exists only if each of them is needed to accomplish the desired output and if these all depend on each other. The nature of this mutual dependence can be exactly defined. Both the output and the processes taking part in the function link can be defined by a set of certain characteristics regarded as variables. From the point of view of the output, processes will be regarded mutually consistent if the alteration of any variable describing one of the processes will influence the modification rate of any output- variable and it also depends on every other substantial process variables. If, therefore, all variables are expressed by continuous quantities then any process-variable’s derivative of an output variable will be the function of all other process variables. 7 As to the systems, the Heisenberg’s indefiniteness relation is of great significance because if the information expected by the researcher from the system is of the same order of magnitude as the system itself then the information cannot be applied for the system and cannot be even achieved without changing the system. This principle has been verified first in the physics but its significance is ever growing as we proceed through the biology towards the social sciences. The order in the stochastic systems is of non- deterministic nature but events occur – subsequently from the essential kind of the system itself – with a probability less than one and may perform chaotic behaviour. The former method of demonstrating suppose also fails simply because the hypothesis pertains not on the certainty but on the probability of the event. As a result, the successfulness of those methods dealing with the special systems and with the empirical investigations in the physics may be regarded as a fortunate accident owing really to the fact that the systems studied were large enough (not as those of Heisenberg where the information is of the same order of magnitude than the system and the observation is part of the system) having a very insignificant probability character. 8 For practical reasons, let’s circumscribe the concept of the system more exactly as such an arrangement of the constituents which serves to reach the concrete purpose according to a certain programme. This definition has three essential factors. In the first place, it should need an object to be realized by the system. Secondly, it is necessary for the components a well-defined settlement to be arranged. At last the information about the distribution of energy and matter according to the programme. Thus any physical entity can be considered as a system if the output (outcome) of its behaviour will be conceived as the result of the interaction between the parts. Many entities, therefore, can be treated both as elements and as systems depending on the decision of the investigator. The biological system can be described at least to some extent as a self-regulatory system. Its four essential characteristics are as follows: 1. Its elements have the disposal of life as an attribute. CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 390 CMI JOURNAL Janos Vincze et al. 2. There is structural link between its components. Thus for example, the nutrition is connected with the circulation and respiration and with the excretion as well. 3. The subgroups of different function are aware of each other’s behaviour through communication. This is mainly realized by the nervous and the endocrine system. 4. The living system has certain liberty of selection in respect to the ways of action and also to the goals (the result expected). In the interest of its self-preservation, it can select between foods, choose living space in the environment and a mate for the race- preservation. Shortly speaking the four essential feature of the living systems is the sum of the content components, the structural construction, the communication and the ambiguous but interval parameters realizing the functions. It must be stressed by all means that the system is always just an approximate modelling but it enables us the better recognition of our environment and ourselves as well. The Hierarchy of the Systems The approximations of the investigations between the branches of science by interdisciplinary attitude clearly show the increasing interest for joining the knowledge into systems of wide spectra. If we don’t want the research between the branches of science to lead into limitlessness then we have to elaborate systems for the integration of the independent branches within which they can still maintain their distinctive character. 9 The hierarchy of the systems will be built up according to a spiral line expanding in breadth and depth towards the infinity. Although the idea of the system and the necessity of building-up systems is not new-fangled (updated), systems were not enough stressed in the sciences for a long time. Though as a result of the significant discoveries at the beginning of our century, a break-through has been achieved both in the field of physics and of mathematics, yet these were the last decades when the interdisciplinary attitude came across also in the biology. 10 But in addition there was a considerable contribution by the rapid development of other sciences like mathematics, physics, chemistry, technical sciences because their discoveries, methodologies and tools gave way for the biologists to probe deeply enough into the recognition of the living material. 11 At the same time, the results of the sciences penetrated stimulating and inspiring the biology in the form of analogy and terminology. One important mode to construct general systems is if we recognize the common phenomena occurring in the different specialized sciences and construct the systems applicable for such phenomena. The second construction mode would be to arrange the systems in a hierarchic system. 12 This in the same time would result in fixing the abstraction levels corresponding to the different degrees. This cannot be realized unequivocally. The second construction mode, the hierarchy of the levels will be investigated in details. Generally speaking the different levels cannot be delimited unambiguously and it is the investigator to separate them artificially due to methodological reasons. Systems are not divided into sub-, super- and co-ordinated relations, respectively, in a well determined manner but they appear intermixed in the structural hierarchy. Let’s sketch out the hierarchy of the systems according to Boulding 13 as follows: 1.) The first level is that of the static structure. It could be called the level of the shells (skeletons). It is really the geography and anatomy of the universe: the localization scheme of the electrons around the nucleus, the scheme of the atoms in a molecular formula, the settlement of the atoms in a crystal, the anatomy of the gene, the cell, the plant, the animal, the map of the Earth, the solar system, the stellar world. The organized theoretical knowledge starts with the exact description of these shells on almost every territory because no functional or dynamic theory can exist without this accurate description of the static conditions. 2.) On the second level you can see the simple dynamic system with its predetermined, necessary movements. It could have been called the level of the clockworks. From the human point of view, of course, it is the solar system as the great clock of the universe and the imposingly accurate predictions of the astronomers to bear witness to CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 391 CMI JOURNAL Janos Vincze et al. the excellent quality of the clockwork applied. Mechanical powers can be usually interpreted on this level, like the lever and the pulley but also more complicated machines like the steam-engine and the dynamo (generator). To the same level belongs the physics, chemistry and even the major part of the theoretical constructions of the economy, too. 3.) The next level is the steering mechanism or cybernetic system which could be otherwise called the thermostat level. This differs from the simple stationary equilibrium system in that its substantial part is the transmission and processing of the information. The equilibrium, therefore, will not be simply determined by the equations of the system but the system itself seeks to maintain – within limits – a certain equilibrium. The greatly important homeostatic model in the physiology is only one example for the cybernetic mechanism but the whole world investigated by the biologist and sociologist is full of such mechanisms. 4.) The fourth level is the „open system” or the self-sustaining structure. On this level the living begins to separate from that which is not living: this could be called the level of the cell. If we fall in with systems being able to reproduce and sustain themselves during matter- and energy- perfusion then we have to deal with something of the kind which we hardly can deny the name „life”. 5.) The fifth is the level of the genetic society the typical form of it rules over the flora and the empirical world of the botany. The major characteristics of this system are first the cell population formed by division of labour between the cells with its differentiated and mutually interrelated parts (roots, leaves, seeds etc.), secondly a sharp separation between genotype and phenotype which is related to the one-aimed or programmed growth. 6.) Going upwards from the flora to the fauna gradually we reach the „animal” level which is characterized by motility, specific behaviour and by self-identification. Here special information- receivers are developing (like eye, ear, etc.) and as a result, the information-uptake grows enormously. In addition, the nervous system increasingly develops, after all the brain as the organ which organizes the information into structural knowledge or „image”. Going upwards on the scale of the animal life, the behaviour becomes not only a reaction to any concrete stimulus in an ever raising degree but an answer to an „image” or structured knowledge or attitude formed from the environment as a whole. This image will lastly be determined, of course, by the information taken up by the organism, however, the relation between information-uptake and imaging (the construction of a picture) is extremely complicated. The process is not simply the accumulation of the accepted information – although it is often the case – but it will be structured in a manner which essentially differs from the information itself. Once the image- structure has been definitely formed the new information will hardly change on the picture: it quasi passes the loose structure without „colliding” with whatever. The image sometimes „catches” the information incorporating it, sometimes the information comes into collision with any core, „nucleus” of the image so that its whole will be transformed in a way that a seemingly inconsiderable stimulus will provoke a highly significant reaction, that is to say, the behaviour will change considerably and radically. Thus the determination of the future behaviour of such systems will be aggravated, namely by the picture intercalated between the stimulus and the answer. 7.) Follows the „human” level, that is the individual human being comprehended as a system. Man is probably the only organism which knows that he will die, which takes into account – by forming his behaviour – his full lifespan and even more of it. Man exists not only in a given time and space but in history, too, and his behaviour will be deeply influenced how he sees the course of time he lives in. 8.) The social level. The fundamental level of such systems is not even the individual – the human being as such – but the „role” that is those circumstances of the personality which are in relation with the organism or situation in question. What should be investigated on this level? The content and meaning of the informations, the nature and dimensions of the systems/scales of values, the transcription of images into history, the embarrassing and delicate symbolize of the fine arts, music, poetry. CMI 04 (02), 387−392 CMI JOURNAL 392 CMI JOURNAL Janos Vincze et al. 9.) In order to complete the hierarchy of the systems still we have to include the level of the psychical systems, too. There are also other aspects to classify our environmental world. Below, you will find some other hierarchies of the systems. Such kind of representation of this hierarchy has, among others, the advantage that it offers some idea about the shortcomings of our present – theoretical as well as practical – knowledge. Matter is known to exist of two fundamental kind: that of discrete nature, of corpuscular structure and those physical domains/fields displaying steady feature and transmitting interactions between material parts. 14 The particles of corpuscular character and the physical domains can not be sharply separated from each other, there is no impassable barrier between the two outward forms of the matter, they can transform in each other. 15 Under certain circumstances, these outward forms of the matter posses similar features, corpuscular generate spaces of different type, display continuous wave character, on the other hand, domains may have manifestations characteristic of particles. The material systems are in steady movement, motion is inseparable from the matter. References: 1. Vincze, J.: Biophysics 7. NDP P., Bp., 1998. 2. Vincze, J.: Biophysics 15. NDP P., Bp., 2000. 3. Vincze, J.: Biophysics 36. NDP P., Bp., 2009. 4. Ackerman, E.: Biophysical Science. 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