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Biology is becoming the leading science in this century. As in all other sciences, progress in biology depends on interactions between empirical research, theory building, and modeling. But whereas the techniques and methods of descriptive and experimental biology have evolved dramatically in recent years, generating a flood of highly detailed empirical 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 bio-sciences, this series intends to help fill the 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 biology movement of early-twentieth-century Vienna. Paul Weiss and Ludwig von Bertalanffy were among the first to use the term theoretical biology in a modern scientific context. In their understanding the subject was not limited to mathematical formalization, as is often the case today, but extended to the conceptual problems and foundations of biology. It is this commitment to a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary integration of theoretical concepts that the present series intends to emphasize. Today theoretical biology has genetic, developmental, and evolutionary components , the central connective themes in modern biology, but also includes relevant aspects of computational biology, semiotics, and cognition research, and extends to the naturalistic philosophy of sciences. The “Vienna Series” grew out of theory-oriented workshops organized by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI), an international center for advanced study closely associated with Series Foreword x Series Foreword the University of Vienna. The KLI fosters research projects, workshops, archives, book projects, and the journal Biological Theory, all devoted to aspects of theoretical biology, with an emphasis on integrating the developmental , evolutionary, and cognitive sciences. The series editors welcome suggestions for book projects in these fields. Gerd B. Müller, University of Vienna and KLI Günter P. Wagner, Yale University and KLI Werner Callebaut, Hasselt University and KLI ...

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