The Convergent Evolution of Agriculture in Humans and Insects

Biology is a leading science in this century. As in all other sciences, progress in biology depends on the interrelations between empirical research, theory building, modeling, and societal context. But whereas molecular and experimental biology have evolved dramatically in recent years, generating a flood of highly detailed data, the integration of these results into useful theoretical frameworks has lagged behind. Driven largely by pragmatic and technical considerations, research in biology continues to be less guided by theory than seems indicated. By promoting the formulation and discussion of new theoretical concepts in the biosciences, this series intends to help fill important gaps in our understanding of some of the major open questions of biology, such as the origin and organization of organismal form, the relationship between development and evolution, and the biological bases of cognition and mind. Theoretical biology has important roots in the experimental tradition of early-twentieth-century Vienna. Paul Weiss and Ludwig von Bertalanffy were among the first to use the term theoretical biology in its modern sense.

In their understanding the subject was not limited to mathematical formalization, as is often the case today, but extended to the conceptual foundations of biology. It is this commitment to a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary integration of theoretical concepts that the Vienna Series intends to emphasize. Today, theoretical biology has genetic, developmental, and evolutionary components, the central connective themes in modern biology, but it also includes relevant aspects of computational or systems biology and extends to the naturalistic philosophy of sciences.