In 1963, 1965 and 1967 "Symposia on Quantitative Biology of Metabolism" were organized on the pretty island of Helgoland (Biologische Anstalt) by me in col laboration with O. KINNE and F. KROGER. Unfortunately this worthy approach towards bringing together interested scholars in a regular way ceased, mainly for financial reasons, although the need for and interest in conferences like these for the exchange of ideas on special topics unchangeably persists. So I had to look for other possibilities and one of them was to try to arrange a similar con ference under the auspices of NASA. This...

The development of the life sciences may be said to have effected a gradual transition from a more or less intuitive prescientific approach based on crude observation, via a more refined type of observation to experimentation and hence to the level of formal theories. Quantitative methods are introduced at the second level; they comprise: (a) quantitative design of experiments; (b) regrouping of experimental results; (c) evalua tion of results by means of mathematical or special statistical techniques. The last step implies the introduction of theoretical concepts, but we are not justified in...