Organised by Ruãn Batista, Maël Montévil  et Anton Robert.

Address: Ecole normale supérieure, 29, rue d’Ulm – Paris Ve

Abstract

The National Research Council of the National Academies (USA) published a report in 2009 arguing for “a New Biology for the XXIst century”, based on the integration “through the unifying languages of mathematics, modeling, and computational science”. This perspective is well represented and illustrated in CNRS1 by the committee labeled “Mathematical modeling, informatics, and physics for the life sciences” 2.

However, long-lasting problems in the relationship between mathematics are not addressed by this strategy. They are illustrated by  the famous joke whereby a farmer asks for help from the university. After some time, the chief of the interdisciplinary committee comes to him and declares: We have found an exact solution to your problem,  but it only holds for spherical cows in the vacuum.  The issue here is not just one of approximation     or idealization; it is also that cows,  according to evolutionary theory,  have  a history and continue  to evolve,  and this historicity defines the cows we observe today. Notably, the plasticity of living beings collides with the invariance of underlying mathematical structures. For example, in the context of the emerging field of evo-devo, West-Eberhardt discussed the dramatic changes displayed in a goat with paralysis of its forelegs. This paralysis and its subsequent activities led to a major restructuring of bones, muscles, and tendons, resulting in a bipedal goat that became a banner for the magnitude and theoretical significance of developmental plasticity.

This event aims to take a step back and reflect on everyday mathematical modeling. We aim to organize a discussion on the diversity of this practice in biology and the homologies in current models. We wish to center those discussions around two related problems. First, given that the general reference system of biology builds on a notion of novelty to classify living beings, how can we use mathematical structures (using predefined spaces of possibilities) to describe living beings while avoiding contradiction? Is it reasonable that many of these practices do not even consider the organization of the organisms? Second, if models can be considered as instruments  that contribute to shaping scientific reasoning, is their inscription within broader theoretical frameworks (not) necessary? Are data-based approaches sufficient to understand the living, or should theoretical and methodolog- ical jumps be performed? Is the perspective of the National Research Council sound when it states that “not all New Biologists are now, or will in the future be, biologists”? How to take mathematics and modelling seriously and, at the same time, avoid the disruption of biological knowledge by the fetishization of those tools?

Link for the online video:

Program

Format for speakers: 30min of presentation + 10min Q&A

Day 1

9:30 Introduction

Session 1: Measuring what? Models and the general reference system of biology (chair: Maël Montévil)

9:45 Ruãn Batista

10:25 Valentin Rineau

11h05 Coffee break

11:20 Ignacio Quintero

12:00 Round table

12:45 Lunch

Session 2: The tension between historicity and mathematics (chair: Giuseppe Longo)

14:30 Aleksandra Walczak

15:10 Guillaume Achaz

16:00 Coffee break

16:30 Katja Heuer and Roberto Toro

17:10 Maël Montévil

17:50 Round table

18:50 Cocktail party

Day 2

Session 3: Data, models, and theory (chair: Anton Robert)

10:00 Paul Villoutreix

10:40 Barbara Bravi

11:20 Coffee break

11:35 Cyril Rauch

12:05 Round table

12:50 Lunch

Session 4: The challenge of theory-based model in biology (chair: Ruãn Batista)

14:30 Giuseppe Longo

15:10 Anton Robert

15:50 Coffee break

16:20 Charbel El-Hani

16:50 Ana Soto (and Carlos Sonnenschein?)

17:30 Round table

18:30 Synthesis

Crédit photo : © Ingrid Kallick