A Cybernetic View of Biological Growth
The Maia Hypothesis

The Maia hypothesis is a novel cybernetic approach to understanding growth processes and the regulation of biological growth.

Tony Stebbing (Author)

9780521199636, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 December 2010

456 pages, 116 b/w illus. 7 tables
23.4 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.85 kg

Maia is the story of an idea, and its development into a working hypothesis, that provides a cybernetic interpretation of how growth is controlled. Growth at the lowest level is controlled by regulating the rate of growth. Access to the output of control mechanisms is provided by perturbing the growing organism, and then filtering out the consequences to growth rate. The output of the growth control mechanism is then accessible for interpretation and modelling. Perturbation experiments have been used to provide interpretations of hormesis, the neutralization of inhibitory load and acquired tolerance to toxic inhibition, and catch-up growth. The account begins with an introduction to cybernetics covering the regulation of growth and population increase in animals and man and describes this new approach to access the control of growth processes. This book is suitable for postgraduate students of biological cybernetics and researchers of biological growth, endocrinology, population ecology and toxicology.

Preface
1. Maia - the argument in outline
2. Growth unlimited - growth as a biological explosion
3. Self-regulating systems - from machine to man
4. The wealth of homeodynamic responses
5. A cybernetic approach to growth analysis
6. A control mechanism for Maia
7. The three-fold way of adaptation
8. Population growth and its control
9. Hierarchy - a controlled harmony
10. The historical origins of hormesis
11. Maian mechanisms for hormesis and catch-up growth
12. Cellular growth control and cancer
13. Overpopulation
14. Our finite Earth
15. The Maia hypothesis and anagenesis
Glossary
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Cellular biology [cytology PSF], Toxicology [non-medical PSBT], Cellular physiology [MFGC]