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Books > Medicine > Clinical & internal medicine > Diseases & disorders > Immunology
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Immunity - The Evolution of an Idea (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,318
Discovery Miles 13 180
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Immunity - The Evolution of an Idea (Paperback)
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Modern immunology traditionally conceives of the immune system as
providing defense against pathogens. Alfred I. Tauber criticizes
this conception of immunity as too narrow, because it discounts
much of the immune system's other normal functions. These include
active tolerance of nutritional exchanges with the environment and
the stabilization of cooperative relationships with resident
micro-organisms. An expanded account extends immunity's functional
role from singular 'defense' to broadened discernment of
environmental 'exchange.' This ecological perspective has profound
theoretical implications, for the basic notion of immune identity
is reconfigured: highlighting the organism as a holobiont (a
consortium of diverse organisms living in cooperative
relationships) challenges prevailing concepts of individuality and
the self/nonself dichotomy heretofore organizing immune theory.
Indeed, if theoretical interest is focused on the challenges of
maintaining immune balance in the full ecological context of the
organism, then immune regulation assumes new complexity. Tauber
maintains that the key to unravelling that puzzle requires a
critical re-assessment of the cognitive processes that underlie
immune effector functions. Accordingly, he provides the outline of
a re-formulated 'cognitive paradigm' that dispenses with
agent-based models and adopts an ecologically conceived
understanding of perception and information processing. The
implications of this revised configuration of immunity and its
deconstructed notions of individuality and selfhood have wide
significance for philosophers and life scientists working in
immunology, ecology, and the cognitive sciences.
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