Thomas Kenneth Arnold, PhD
The Physics of Living Systems contains a set of theories about how living systems function. A “living system” is any living organism, ranging from a single-cell organism to a human being. I will try to show how we can develop a better understanding of living systems by examining the statistics generated by individual organisms and populations of organisms.
This web-site is intended to provide a conversation between you and I. What do you think about these ideas? Please contact me using the contact information on the About page if you have any questions or suggestions.
I will be looking at variation between and within individual organisms by examining three sources of variation, 1) developmental variation, 2) trait variation, and 3) state variation. I call these sources of variation the “Facts of Life” because many people seem to ignore these sources of variation in scientific studies. This can cause egregious errors in interpreting the outcomes of these studies.
We need a Physics of Living Systems because several scientific problems are almost impossible to solve using current scientific theories. For example, the Pareto Principle is a well-known statistical property. The Pareto Principle states that in many cases, 80% of the outcomes are caused by 20% of the individuals. Why? According to Wikipedia, we don’t seem to know. The Physics of Living Systems provides a possible explanation.
I have discovered a model of living systems that appears to explain a class of scientific problems like the Pareto principle. My explanations suggest that we might want to rethink our perceptions about the relationship between probability and event creation to understand why there is a Pareto principle. There seem to be several steps involved in the explanation that are not generally available in the average day-to-day scientific discussions. My goal is to describe a “Physics of Living Systems” that gives us the tools to solve scientific puzzles similar to the Pareto principle. These puzzles are difficult, if not impossible, to solve without a change in our perception of how the world works.
I am a citizen scientist. My bachelor’s degree was in physics. I have been working for several decades on a series of scientific problems that began in the area of psychology. My initial research was intended to answer questions about the difficulty of creating changes in myself. Why was it so hard to change my habits of mind? In the process of trying to find the answer to that question, I ended up going down several research rabbit holes. I started to realize that our current scientific theories and methods were not going to provide the answers to my question. I needed to develop new theories and methods.
My search for answers involved explorations in over 100 different scientific areas. As I studied these various subjects, I saw patterns and relationships that appeared repeatedly. There appear to be processes that are common to all living organisms. I would like to explore these patterns and relationships in “The Physics of Living Systems.”
Theory, Method, and Practice
My work has been interdisciplinary from the beginning. I studied more than 100 subjects while searching for solutions to scientific puzzles I encountered. When I started trying to explain the solutions to these puzzles, I found it difficult to explain the theories I developed, which had been based on the results from new research methods and mathematical models I developed, and show how these theories and methods could be used to develop applications that were superior to the old applications. There were too many moving parts. I decided to break my explanations down into three sections, theory, method, and practice.
This site is the theoretical section. I am calling my theoretical work “The Physics of Living Systems.” The work on this theoretical model has grown out of several decades of research and analysis. My basic thesis is that current scientific models and methods are incapable of solving some important problems in the sciences. New scientific paradigms are needed to explain certain fundamental facts that are accepted, but unexplainable with current theories. I will be describing novel ways of thinking about the characteristics of individuals, and how individual characteristics come into play when we are working with populations.
This is an inter-disciplinary project. I will be drawing from many different literatures from several scientific disciplines. I will be suggesting that there are a set of universal processes that affect all living systems. Therefore, we should focus some efforts on understanding these basic processes so that we can better understand how these universal processes affect affect the phenomena we observe in a particular scenario.
Who should read this book? In essence, anyone who is working with living systems like people, animals, plants, or one celled organisms should probably read this book. I would argue that anyone who studies individual or population differences in living systems would gain a better understanding of their subject from reading this book. In addition, anyone interested in measuring and/or creating change at the individual or population level will benefit from reading this book.
As mentioned, the theories I will be exploring in The Physics of Living Systems grew out of several decades of research and analysis. These efforts were part of an iterative process. The discovery of unexplainable processes lead to searches for new methods of analysis. The new methods ultimately lead to new practical approaches that produced superior results in my work as a data scientist. When I started trying to write up my explanations, it seemed that I had a lot of material for the reader to digest if I were to try to write about multiple levels of innovation. It seemed to me that theorists, method developers, and people developing practical applications appear to be somewhat different groups. Therefore, rather than try to do everything at once and explain my theories, methods, and practices in one book, I am taking a “divide and conquer” approach.
The Physics of Living Systems is an online book that covers the theoretical innovations I am proposing. Data Pattern Analysis is a separate online book that provides an overview of the methods I have developed for analyzing individual and population data. Theory Driven Data Science shows how to use my theories and methods to produce better predictive models. Finally, Explorations in Science provides an autobiographical perspective, which might make some of my discoveries more understandable.