Part II, Rosen's autobiographical reminiscences

["Judith Rosen" <***>]

This is the next installment taken from the paper of Robert Rosen's that was
written in the early to mid-1990's for a Systems journal that wanted a more
personal account of my father's journey through his life towards doing the
work he ultimately ended up doing in Theoretical Biology, BioPhysics, and
Sytstems Theory, et al.

PART II OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES
By Robert Rosen
(Copyright, Judith Rosen)

I investigated several possibilities [while looking for a post-graduate
university in NYC--insert, Judith Rosen]. One was the Courant Insitute. They
were horrified by even the suggestion of biology, and offered me instead a
PhD program in fluid dynamics, which in their view, exhausted the universe.
I settled rather on Columbia Universtiy, which at least on paper had a bit
of a program in operator theory. In some ways, it was fortunate for me that
I did so, as I will explain below. But in general, the year was one of
intense academic frustration; I was learning little there, and I came to
hate the sterile ambience of the place.

There was on the Columbia faculty one person who was described as a
"biophysicist." I went to see him, hoping to get first-hand advice, about
what biophysicists did. In fact, this person was a muscle physiologist, who
had a little laboratory in the attic on the 14th floor of the physics
building, Pupin Hall. It was a true attic; dark, damp, and disorderly. I
found the little cubbyhole which housed this person, knowing already I was
on a fruitless errand. But I went through with it, trying to explain my
intentions, however imperfectly. To this day, I remember his contemptuous
retort: "We don't do any of that theoretical stuff around here; we keep our
feet on the ground." It was all I could do to keep from laughing in his
face, at the sudden vision of ourselves, fourteen stories up in a corner of
an attic, keeping our feet on the ground. It's a picture which often comes
to mind when dealing with experimentalists, even now. In any case, I stuck
out the remainder of the academic year, picked up a perfunctory MA, and left
for a new life in Chicago.

After the sterility of Columbia, and indeed of the four years of college
which had preceded it, the University of Chicago was like an explosion of
light. The sheer intellectual ferment of the place was like nothing else in
my experience, filled with the excitement of new things to learn.

But things were to turn even better for me, from a completely unforeseen
quarter. I had long known of the existence of a Committee on Mathematical
Biology at the University of Chicago. I knew Rashevsky's book, "Mathematical
Biophysics". And I knew that this was very far from the sorts of things I
had in mind. In my view, all these activities were focused entirely on
epiphenomena of life, and not on the life itself. Blood flow in arteries?
Propogation of action potentials? This is not the stuff of life; this was
back to the rocks again. Indeed, such conserns seemed diametrically opposite
to my own; knowing about them only strengthened my resolve to persist in my
own strategy and begin afresh.

Nevertheless, soon after I arrived in Chicago, and almost by accident, I
obtained an appointment to see Rashevsky himself. I expected it would be
like my encounter with the Columbia "bio-physicist". But it was not.
Rashevsky offered me something I had never received or solicited or expected
from any external quarter: encouragement. He informed me that his own views
had changed radically over the past few years, and had led him to a new
approach which he had christened Relational Biology. He gave me his keystone
paper, then only two years old and entitled, provocatively, "Topology and
Life", to read. This turned out to be the only thing I had ever come across
that was in my ballpark; consonant with my own Imperative. After a few more
discussions, Rashevsky offered me a small fellowship, an office of my own,
and absolute carte blanche in preparation of a dissertation, in return for
taking my PhD in his Committee.

After a day or two of reconsideration of my alternatives, I accepted this
offer. My feeling was that I had already accomplished my purpose in studying
Mathematics; I regarded myself as fully independent and fluent in that
language. To persist in Mathematics, in the face of Rashevsky's offer, would
gain me little and would in fact slow me down. So I transferred out of the
Department of Mathematics, and into the Committee on Mathematical Biology.
Once again, everyone thought I must have lost my mind, and once again, I
could not explain. But by my lights, it was the only correct thing to do. I
received my PhD in Mathematical Biology two years later.

Upon entering the Committee, in the fall of 1957, I at last felt fully free
to unleash myself in the pursuit of my Imperative, too inexperienced to be
daunted by what I was proposing to undertake. I felt, what I still feel,
that I had at least an even chance of success; that my inherent intellectual
equipment and the scientific capabilities I had accumulated gave me
perspectives which no one else had, and that if I failed, it would only be
my own fault. In short, I was already the Biologist I had aspired to become,
and it was now time to put those arts to the test.

The next two years consisted of an absolute orgy, a frenzy, of activity. I
simultaneously embarked along at least a half-dozen fronts. Much of this
work was only published years later, if at all. Early in 1957, I had
discovered the (M,R)- systems, and developed some of their extraordinary
properties; this work, published in 1958 and 1959, became my dissertation. I
began to explore the quantum-mechanical dictum that material events
consisted of observables being evaluated on states, as the tangible bridge
between the rocks and the life. I became aware of the strange
epistemological status of Church's Thesis, and began to explore its actual
implications. I did some (abortive) work on algebraic aspects of biological
coding schemes, and decided on morphogenesis, a uniquely biological
phenomenon, as my testing ground for general theoretical ideas in biology. M
ost of my subsequent scientific work has been based, in large part, on the
foundations I established in those two years.

I felt then, and continue to feel, that none of this work was in any way
"speculative". Indeed, I believe that theory is the antithesis of
"speculation", despite the confusion between the two in the minds of those
who do speculate. Nor have I ever believed that theory and "practice" were
in any way adversarial. What I do believe is that "practice," in the form of
observation and experiment, cannot constitute or replace theory, and that
most of the basic questions of science, especially in Biology, fall quite
outside the ken of "practice", in the usual sense. My own life would have
been made much simpler if empirics alone would suffice for my Imperative.

***********************To be continued...*******************

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