to major societal needs: sustainable food production, protection of the environment,
renewable energy, and improvement in human health. These challenges represent both the
mechanism for accelerating the emergence of a New Biology and its first fruits. Responding
to its Statement of Task, the committee found the answer to the question: “How can a
fundamental understanding of living systems reduce uncertainty about the future of life on
earth, improve human health and welfare, and lead to the wise stewardship of our planet?”
in calling for a national initiative to apply the potential of the New Biology to addressing
these societal challenges (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, vii)”.’
The Report makes a number of recommendations while posing a number of
crucial research questions, notably the following:
‘How can a fundamental understanding of living systems reduce uncertainty about the
future of life on earth, improve human health and welfare, and lead to the wise stewardship
of our planet? Can the consequences of environmental, stochastic or genetic changes be
understood in terms of the related properties of robustness and fragility inherent in all
biological systems?’
Envisaging a problem-driven New Biology for the twenty-first century, it indicates an answer to the above question as follows (P. 3): ‘The essence of the New
Biology, as defined by the committee, is integration—rereintegration of the many
sub-disciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists,
computer scientists, engineers and mathematicians to create a research community
with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems.
Integrating knowledge from many disciplines will permit deeper understanding of
biological systems, which will both lead to biology-based solutions to societal
problems and also feed back to enrich the individual scientific disciplines that
contribute new insights. The New Biology is not intended to replace the research
that is going on now; that research, much of it fundamental and curiosity-driven by
individual scientists, is the foundation on which the New Biology rests and on
which it will continue to rely. Instead, the New Biology represents an additional,
complementary approach to biological research (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/
12764.html)’.
In Chap. 2, entitled ‘How the New Biology Can Address Societal Challenges
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, pp. 17–38)’ the Committee articulates
four kinds of challenge, viz., generating food plants capable of adapting and
growing under environmental change, modelling ecosystem function and biodiversity under unpredictable change, expanding sustainable alternatives to fossil
fuels and monitoring individual health in order to provide predictive surveillance
and care. Making the future less and less uncertain by addressing the above stated
four kinds of challenge, by following a technology-led climate policy and by
participating in an energy-technology race with R&D of low carbon technologies
should be the focus of convergence and knowledge resources dynamics equally.
The convergence model and knowledge resources dynamics accordingly require a
rebuilding of the knowledge environments in the universities and research institutions, on the one hand, and a rethinking of the science-technology-industry
interface, on the other. The four kinds of challenge could be respectively tackled by
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, pp. 17–38):
152
G.L. Pandit
renewable energy, and improvement in human health. These challenges represent both the
mechanism for accelerating the emergence of a New Biology and its first fruits. Responding
to its Statement of Task, the committee found the answer to the question: “How can a
fundamental understanding of living systems reduce uncertainty about the future of life on
earth, improve human health and welfare, and lead to the wise stewardship of our planet?”
in calling for a national initiative to apply the potential of the New Biology to addressing
these societal challenges (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, vii)”.’
The Report makes a number of recommendations while posing a number of
crucial research questions, notably the following:
‘How can a fundamental understanding of living systems reduce uncertainty about the
future of life on earth, improve human health and welfare, and lead to the wise stewardship
of our planet? Can the consequences of environmental, stochastic or genetic changes be
understood in terms of the related properties of robustness and fragility inherent in all
biological systems?’
Envisaging a problem-driven New Biology for the twenty-first century, it indicates an answer to the above question as follows (P. 3): ‘The essence of the New
Biology, as defined by the committee, is integration—rereintegration of the many
sub-disciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists,
computer scientists, engineers and mathematicians to create a research community
with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems.
Integrating knowledge from many disciplines will permit deeper understanding of
biological systems, which will both lead to biology-based solutions to societal
problems and also feed back to enrich the individual scientific disciplines that
contribute new insights. The New Biology is not intended to replace the research
that is going on now; that research, much of it fundamental and curiosity-driven by
individual scientists, is the foundation on which the New Biology rests and on
which it will continue to rely. Instead, the New Biology represents an additional,
complementary approach to biological research (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/
12764.html)’.
In Chap. 2, entitled ‘How the New Biology Can Address Societal Challenges
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, pp. 17–38)’ the Committee articulates
four kinds of challenge, viz., generating food plants capable of adapting and
growing under environmental change, modelling ecosystem function and biodiversity under unpredictable change, expanding sustainable alternatives to fossil
fuels and monitoring individual health in order to provide predictive surveillance
and care. Making the future less and less uncertain by addressing the above stated
four kinds of challenge, by following a technology-led climate policy and by
participating in an energy-technology race with R&D of low carbon technologies
should be the focus of convergence and knowledge resources dynamics equally.
The convergence model and knowledge resources dynamics accordingly require a
rebuilding of the knowledge environments in the universities and research institutions, on the one hand, and a rethinking of the science-technology-industry
interface, on the other. The four kinds of challenge could be respectively tackled by
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12764.html, pp. 17–38):
152
G.L. Pandit