CONTENTS -- Prolog Understanding the Functioning of Living Organisms -- The phenomena of respiration as viewed by Aristotle and Claude Bernard -- Is the time now ripe for integrative physiology? -- A novel approach to the functioning of living organisms -- Chapter I Physical and Biological Interactions -- Can physical and biological interactions be compared? -- Some consequences of the concept of functional interactions -- How do biological principles differ from physical principles? -- Formalisms in analytical mechanics -- The mysterious principle of least action -- The formalization of physical phenomena -- An example of formalization: the phenomenon of diffusion and the propagation of heat -- Mathematics and physical reality -- Chapter II The Functional Organization of Living Organisms -- The functional organization of biochemical pathways -- The functional organization of genes -- The functional organization of nervous tissue -- Structural hierarchy and functional hierarchy in living organisms -- Chapter III The Integration of Physiological Functions -- Claude Bernard's concept of the internal medium -- Homeostasis and functional equilibria -- The essential environmental functions of the integrated functional organization -- How the body gets rid of excess acidity produced by the metabolism -- Is the nature of the biological universe mathematically intelligible? -- Chapter IV Structural and Functional Organizations of Living Organisms -- Structure and function from the epistemiological, physical and biological points of view -- The importance of stability in biological phenomena -- The physiological function viewed as a hierarchical system -- The hierarchy of functional organization -- Three-dimensional representation of the relationship between the functional and structural organizations of a biological system.

"Dual" representations of a biological system: (N, a) and ( , p) -- Some consequences of the ( , p) representation -- The theoretical representation of a living organism -- Chapter V Physiological Constraints of Biological Development -- Thermodynamics governs the variation of physical structures with time -- Biological systems can change their structural organization -- The principle of stabilizing self-association explains the existence of functional interactions -- Networks of metabolic pathways are created by self-association -- A novel qualitative model describes the specialization of tissues in living organisms -- Physiological invariance is governed by the principle of vital coherence -- Physiological invariance determines the value and existence of physiological functions -- The potential of functional organization taps a "reservoir" of developmental possibilities -- Can the potential of functional organization of a biological system be calculated? -- Biological systems tend to a maximum potential of functional organization -- The developmental variation of a biological system is governed by its "orgatropy" -- The reorganization of the structural units of a biological system leads to specialization -- Optimum development implies increased functional order and decreased orgatropy -- The potential of organization of the nervous system is maximum during its development -- What distinguishes the living from the non-living? -- Mathematical abstraction can lead to new insights in biology -- Chapter VI The Role of Space in Functional Biological Organization -- Symmetry and locality are essential aspects of physical fields -- Non-symmetry and non-locality are essential aspects of biological fields -- The property of non-locality is inherent to biological systems -- How are biological processes propagated in space?.

Multiple time scales play a fundamental role in biological processes -- The propagation of fields in space depends on the connectivity between the structural units of a biological system -- The nervous system illustrates the role of space in biology -- Dynamic processes in biological systems and mathematical graphs are related through topology and geometry -- Can mathematics solve the mystery of the evolution of the species? -- Are physical structures and physiological functions complementary aspects of the Universe? -- Epilog -- Is the time now ripe for a unifying theory in biology? -- What is the fundamental nature of non-living matter? -- What is the fundamental nature of life? -- How biological systems vary with time -- Plates -- References -- Index.