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All of this curious bio-banter about the mesenteric membranes really highlights one of my favorite bitching points about biology.

There is as huge disbalance in our relative understanding of structure and function in biology. We are strong on structure, but incredibly weak on function. It is the same reason we don’t understand intelligence biologically or philosophically.

I still need to think more about why we have this shortcoming. It may turn out that the perceived relation between structure and function is less important than we think. A part of me thinks we have a lot of biology backwards. A deterministic view of structure-function relations may be highly flawed. Especially when you look at the plasticity of neural function, you can see where there is a huge problem.

This same blind spot for understanding biological function leads to what I regard as almost silly “findings” like deciding mesenteric membranes constitute an organ. Many years ago, skin was belatedly termed as an organ. I am waiting for the next shoe to drop and call connective tissue yet another kind of organ. So, what is this weak netherworld occupied by my colleagues where organism, organ and tissue have this odd interplay? So, also, are we waiting for some kind of supraorgan concept to account for the “microbiome” all throughout our body. How about an “electrome” to cover all the bases with the various electrochemical reactions that make up any life form’s body?

This is the danger of strict empiricism in biology. You keep confabulating all these categories of function that grow like epicycles in Ptolemy’s astronmical system, lacking the organizing principles of a Copernicus.

Function is somehow at the center of this, but we lack a concept like gravity, to pull all these different notions into a unified whole called life.