“A man with his head is something much more then a man’s body plus his separate head” – J. Miller (1965)

Whole is equal to more than the sum of its parts (on some interdisciplinary methodological problems)

In the history of life sciences, perhaps beginning with Aristotle’s time, reductionism prevailed leaving the opposite philosophical approach, holism, outside scientific paradigm. Reductionism and reductionists are concerned with at least two dominant themes: a) the interactions between different domains of knowledge; b) the place of a part in the whole (1).

It is an impression among quite a few experimental researchers, that they are losing the grip on both themes. The review (2) has been attempted in order to put together a few important things, which, though trivial in one domain of knowledge, remained obscure in the other domain, leading to unnecessary confusion and surprises. Obviously, without the information being actively passed between the domains, we can never be sure how the knowledge about a part fits into the whole.

In the field of neuroscience, there is a gap separating the knowledge about intricate neuronal electrical machinery from the knowledge about its also intricate metabolic provision. Although both pieces are painstakingly researched, the lack of interaction between them once led to a methodological mistake, which we discuss in details in the review (2) in hope to suggest a new view at the role of energy homeostasis in regulation of neuronal excitability.

“In the brain, neuronal electrical activity and intricate metabolic energy provisions are closely related. Although both functions have been painstakingly researched by electrophysiologists and biochemists, insufficient interaction between the two domains leads to difficulty in extrapolating the properties observed in the in vitro studies to the properties of the whole in vivo brain. In this paper, we hope to clarify the relationships between neuronal energy status and neuronal electrical function.” (2)

References

1. Grene, M., and D. Depew (2004), The philosophy of biology: an episodic history. New York: Cambridge University Press

2. Y Zilberter, T Zilberter and P Bregestovski. Neuronal activity in vitro and the in vivo reality: the role of energy homeostasis” Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 2010