Organism and character decomposition: Steps towards an integrative theory of biology

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to ove rcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our o pinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biolo gical systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical represent ations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character iden tification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly fo rmulated organism concept. Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biologic al process-such as adaptation by means of natural selection-depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that descri be this process.