The approximation method, relational biology and organismic sets

It is pointed out that the approximation method for diffusion problems, developed by N. Rashevsky in 1937 and successfully used since then by many authors, was in a sense a precursor of relational biology. The connection between the approximation method, relational biology, and the theory of organismic sets, developed in a series of recent papers by N. Rashevsky, is discussed. A number of conclusions known to hold experimentally, are then derived from relational considerations and some of them are applied to organismic sets.