I'm writing a review article in which I explain the different mechanisms by which M. tuberculosis reaches a persistent infection by establishing a cross-signal homeostasis with its host, in which both organisms modulate their actions and reactions towards the other one, and at some part I came up with this sentence " This thought provoking notion makes me think of its similarity to Newton’s third law of motion; a system reaches a steady state whenever the forces acting upon it are equal and opposite one another". How prudent is that?
What do you think about it? :)
The two critical words in the Third Law are 'equal' and 'opposite'. The essence of 'Opposite' may be perceived well in various biological systems.
As pieces of exemplary shreds of evidence, in cancer therapeutics, tumor exerts strong pro-tumor response against applied treatment and imposes therapeutic resistance, one of the major problems seen in preclinical and clinical studies. The same goes for the multidrug resistance in various medically relevant bacteria.
However, measuring/gauging the essence of 'equal' may be a bit difficult task in biological systems.
AFTERALL, BIOLOGY IS A SCIENCE OF EXCEPTION. The rules of physics/chemistry may be applied directly in some cases while in others, they might seem to be bit 'diluted' or rather entwined with greater intricacy... reason: living systems are not isolated systems, which are often considered for the derivation of the rules/laws of physics and chemistry. It is not about the violation of the rules/laws... rather a manifestation of the same in different perspectives- unexplored/unexplained milieu...
The Newton third law of natural science is Action= - Reaction. It is applicable everywhere in Nature starting from the nanoscopic to the cosmic scales of space and time.
Newton's laws apply very specifically to certain fundamental forces of nature (i.e., Gravity, electrostatic, etc.). Drawing a parallel to this in biological systems is an intriguing idea, Although not new.
I) One way to study such a problem is through behavioural biology. It is much more productive to look at a tissue of cells as a "society" rather than a "physical system". I would recommend you to a lecture by Robert Sapolsky at stanford:
https://youtu.be/Y0Oa4Lp5fLE
He discusses the behavioural evolution of living organisms.
II) Another way would be to look at it as a mathematical model. We can model the population growth of cells and explain the equilibrium state. For this, I would share with you the following paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317571612
Although the math is hard to grasp, a look at the abstract will you good insights.
Physical laws are immutable irrespective of which domain
in the pelvic floor there are three directional pelvic musc forces two of which act to open the urethral tube
The way this woks is that diuring micturition, the posterior muscle forces pull the posterior urethral wall backwards to open the urethral tube. The inherent elasticity of vagina and urethr a create an equal and opposite force to restore closure when micturition is finished
Unfortunaly, the balance is only temporary, because the human individual is mortel, and respods adequately only to the limit of its life. Mycobacterium is eternal and easy to multiply rapidly.
Ivka
We are talking mechanics!
Dr Kamarkar's answer concisely says it all.
Maybe you have the wrong blog!
Anyway, very best wishes for the Festive Season!
I do not think newton's law is applicable to biological systems as we are dealing with complex system, and newton's law are good for linear systems.
Amin
yes the feedback control system and the flow mechanics of urination are nonlinear
but when the posterior muscle vectors pull open the posterior urethral wall they have to overcome the inherent elasticity of the tissues which is an opposite reaction to the restorative elastic force
this is pure Newtonian physics
Dear colleagues
as I see it
this is one of the most important discussions ever I n research gate, because ultimately the human body comes down to the conceptual principles of biomechanics and the surgical principles of bioengineering
on this basis alone, we have to consider that every physical principle , whether Newtonian, Chaos theory Laplace Poiseuille must apply
especially important are the disagreements
These force those of one the other side to reassess and justify our position . Only such informed debate can progress science
In continuation, a few remarkable points are in order. A good number of mechanical waves and oscillations, originally governed by the Newton-Coulomb interplay in usual physical plasmas, are speculated to evolve even in the case of biological plasmas. The physics of biocellular dynamics is understood with the help of the physical Debye sheath formation mechanism in physical plasmas, and so forth. It may be noted that the inertial description in any bio-naturalistic comes naturally from the scale-invariant Newtonian formalism irrespective of spatiotemporal scales of our interest.
References
[1] M. Uehara and K. K. Sakane, “Physics and Biology: Bio-plasma physics”, Am. J. Phys., vol. 68 (5), pp. 450 -455, 2000.
[2] D. Andelman, “Electrostatic properties of membranes: The Poisson-Boltzmann theory”, Chapter 12, Handbook of Biological Physics, edited by R. Liposky and E. Sackmann, vol. 1, pp. 603-641 (Elsevier Science B. V. 1995).
[3] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002APS..OSF.1P017G.
[4].http://www.kul.pl/files/57/pracownicy/zon/bioplazma/Jozef_Zon_Bioplazma_summary.pdf.
As an evolutionist, I'm beginning to think about this. Not just Newton's 3rd law either. I think there could be an opportunity for some consilience bewteen the sciences here.
The Newtonian third law of motion (Action = - Reaction) is relevant to all systems in Nature.
Examples: Swimming, Walking, Running, Flying, etc.
Because of Newton's Third Law. You hit the wall with a force, and that exact same amount of force is returned by the wall. While Rowing a boat, when you want to move forward on a boat, you paddle by pushing the water backwards, causing you to move forward.
There goes a proverb, "Tit for tat", which is an actual outcome of the third law due to Newton
The two critical words in the Third Law are 'equal' and 'opposite'. The essence of 'Opposite' may be perceived well in various biological systems.
As pieces of exemplary shreds of evidence, in cancer therapeutics, tumor exerts strong pro-tumor response against applied treatment and imposes therapeutic resistance, one of the major problems seen in preclinical and clinical studies. The same goes for the multidrug resistance in various medically relevant bacteria.
However, measuring/gauging the essence of 'equal' may be a bit difficult task in biological systems.
AFTERALL, BIOLOGY IS A SCIENCE OF EXCEPTION. The rules of physics/chemistry may be applied directly in some cases while in others, they might seem to be bit 'diluted' or rather entwined with greater intricacy... reason: living systems are not isolated systems, which are often considered for the derivation of the rules/laws of physics and chemistry. It is not about the violation of the rules/laws... rather a manifestation of the same in different perspectives- unexplored/unexplained milieu...
There are many species executing locomotion nicely even though having no knowledge of the Newtonian laws of motion;
"Applicability" and "Application" are two different things at this juncture
Newton 3rd law (inertia law) is a fundamental science equation, which is used to to model any biological motion to calculate the action and reaction force. Since computational science is applicable to any field or stream we can also applied this law in modeling biological bodies to detect the inertia of the body.
It is seen that there indeed exists a strong correlation between the Newtonian third law of motion in mechanical sciences and the therapeutic behavior of cancer cells in medical sciences.
Reference:
Article Cancer Therapeutics Following Newton’s Third Law
The "Bio-mechanics" of biological systems is often found to be awesomely governed by the "Newtonian Dynamics" of nonbiological ones
It is the very basis of the Integral Theory paradigm
Muscles pull against firm ligaments to open or close urethral /anal tubes and to stretch the organs to support the stretch receptors, preventing them firing off afferents to activate the bladder/bowel stretch receptors, cortically perceived as urgency.
Weak ligaments = weak muscle forces= incontinence
Thanks a lot for presenting the physiology of the Newtonian philosophy
It is indeed Newton's third law of motion that is is in the root to keep the biosphere alive
It may be interesting to note that the Newton 2nd law of motion [=> Force (F) = Mass (m) X Acceleration (a)] is the main law of Nature.
Both the Newton 1st law (F=0 => a=0; and vice-versa) and the Newton 3rd law (Action = - Reaction) are contained in the 2nd law singularly.
As a consequence, it indeed means that no biophysical system dynamics could evolve in Nature in the absence of any force capable of changing the state of the system as per the 2nd law of motion.
The philosophy of "Life" is simply like a "Dark death" if no understanding of the Newton 3rd law of motion
Dear Carlos Peñafiel Salgado, Newton's third law also known as the "principle of action and reaction" can also be stated as follows: "To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". Any physics problem can be broken down into many simple little problems that can be easily solved. The sum of all the simple little problems that are easy to solve corresponds to the initial problem. For example: what is the final velocity and kinetic energy of an iron cube of mass m starting to slide from the top of a 60 ° inclined 10 m long iron plane? This little problem is not as simple as it seems as it is necessary to know the amount of energy that is transformed into heat and "wear" the metal due to friction. However, it is possible to easily solve the problem by removing the friction and then redo the calculations by adding the coefficient of friction, etc. The problems concerning the Life Sciences cannot generally be broken down into many small simple problems whose sum corresponds to the initial problem. It is not possible to treat a cell by pretending that there is no cell membrane or mitochondria because a cell without a cell membrane or without mitochondria is no longer a cell. On the other hand, living beings often respond differently to the same external stimulus. Examples: 1) some people infected with SARS-CoV-2 develop the COVID 19 disease, while other infected people are completely asymptomatic; 2) the immune system of infected people responds differently and in some cases, the response is excessive and can lead to death. Yet the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects everyone equally. For all these reasons the third law cannot, in general, be "sic et simpliciter" extended to the Biological Sciences. However, perhaps it is possible to use the third law in some special cases.
The Newton third law well describe the physical insights behind many basic biological actions, such as flying birds, swimming fishes, speeding animals, etc
the two critical words in the Third Law are 'equal' and 'opposite'. The essence of 'Opposite' may be perceived well in various biological systems. ... However, measuring/gauging the essence of 'equal' may be a bit difficult task in biological systems. AFTERALL, BIOLOGY IS A SCIENCE OF EXCEPTION.
The Newtonian third law indeed is an idealistic law to be applied only and exceptionally only in the absence of any kind of non-conservative agencies, such as the dissipative friction, the surface roughness of the body, the impulse effect, etc.
In most realistic situations, the reaction force strength goes weaker than the actual action force because of the presence of diversified operating wasteful factors
The two critical words in the Third Law are 'equal' and 'opposite'. The essence of 'Opposite' may be perceived well in various biological systems. ... reason: living systems are not isolated systems, which are often considered for the derivation of the rules/laws of physics and chemistry.
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