The future of oncology seems to lie in Molecular Medicine (MM). MM is a new science based on three pillars. Two of them are evident in its very name and are well known: medical science and molecular biology. However, there is a general unawareness that MM is firmly based on a third, and equally important, pillar: Systems Biomedicine. Currently, this term denotes multilevel, hierarchical models integrating key factors at the molecular, cellular, tissue, through phenotype levels, analyzed to reveal the global behavior of the biological process under consideration. It becomes increasingly evident that the tools to construct such complex models include, not only bioinformatics and modern applied statistics, as is unanimously agreed, but also other interdisciplinary fields of science, notably, Mathematical Oncology, Systems Biology and Theoretical Biophysics.

The historical and epistemological reflection on the applications of mathematical techniques to the Sciences of Nature - physics, biology, chemistry, and geology - today generates attention and interest because of the increasing use of mathematical models in all sciences and their high level of sophistication. The goal of the meeting and the papers collected in this proceedings volume is to give physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and historians of science the opportunity to share information on their work and reflect on the and mathematical models are used in the natural sciences today and in way mathematics the past. The program of the workshop combines the experience of those working on current scientific research in many different fields with the historical analysis of previous results. We hope that some novel interdisciplinary, philosophical, and epistemological considerations will follow from the two aspects of the workshop, the historical and the scientific. This proceedings includes papers presented at the meeting and some of the results of the discussions that took place during the workshop. We wish to express our gratitude to Sergio Monteiro for all his work, which has been essential for the successful publication of these proceedings. We also want to thank the editors of Kluwer AcademidPlenum Publishers for their patience and constant help, and in particular Beth Kuhne and Roberta Klarreich. Our thanks to the fallowing institutions: -Amministrazione Comunale di Arcidosso -Comunita Montana del Monte Amiata .Center for the History of Physics, UCLA -Centre F."

Determinism, holism and complexity: three epistemological attitudes that have easily identifiable historical origins and developments. Galileo believed that it was necessary to "prune the impediments" to extract the mathematical essence of physical phenomena, to identify the math ematical structures representing the underlying laws. This Galilean method was the key element in the development of Physics, with its extraordinary successes. Nevertheless the method was later criticized because it led to a view of nature as essentially "simple and orderly," and thus by choosing not to investigate several charac teristics considered as an "impediment," several essential aspects of the phenomenon under investigation might be left out. The Galilean point of view also contains an acknowledgement of the central role played by the causal nexus among phenomena. The mechanistic-deterministic de scription of reality - for instance, a la Laplace - although acknowledging that it is not possible to predict phenomena exactly owing to unavoid able measurement error, is based on the recognition of the their causal nature, even in an ontological sense. Consequently, deterministic predic tion became the methodological fulcrum of mathematical physics. But although mechanistic determinism has had and, in many cases, still has, considerable success in Physics, in other branches of science this situa tion is much less favourable."

The future of oncology seems to lie in Molecular Medicine (MM). MM is a new science based on three pillars. Two of them are evident in its very name and are well known: medical science and molecular biology. However, there is a general unawareness that MM is firmly based on a third, and equally important, pillar: Systems Biomedicine. Currently, this term denotes multilevel, hierarchical models integrating key factors at the molecular, cellular, tissue, through phenotype levels, analyzed to reveal the global behavior of the biological process under consideration. It becomes increasingly evident that the tools to construct such complex models include, not only bioinformatics and modern applied statistics, as is unanimously agreed, but also other interdisciplinary fields of science, notably, Mathematical Oncology, Systems Biology and Theoretical Biophysics.

The historical and epistemological reflection on the applications of mathematical techniques to the Sciences of Nature - physics, biology, chemistry, and geology - today generates attention and interest because of the increasing use of mathematical models in all sciences and their high level of sophistication. The goal of the meeting and the papers collected in this proceedings volume is to give physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and historians of science the opportunity to share information on their work and reflect on the and mathematical models are used in the natural sciences today and in way mathematics the past. The program of the workshop combines the experience of those working on current scientific research in many different fields with the historical analysis of previous results. We hope that some novel interdisciplinary, philosophical, and epistemological considerations will follow from the two aspects of the workshop, the historical and the scientific* This proceedings includes papers presented at the meeting and some of the results of the discussions that took place during the workshop. We wish to express our gratitude to Sergio Monteiro for all his work, which has been essential for the successful publication of these proceedings. We also want to thank the editors of Kluwer AcademidPlenum Publishers for their patience and constant help, and in particular Beth Kuhne and Roberta Klarreich. Our thanks to the fallowing institutions: -Amministrazione Comunale di Arcidosso -Comunita Montana del Monte Amiata *Center for the History of Physics, UCLA -Centre F.

Determinism, holism and complexity: three epistemological attitudes that have easily identifiable historical origins and developments. Galileo believed that it was necessary to "prune the impediments" to extract the mathematical essence of physical phenomena, to identify the math ematical structures representing the underlying laws. This Galilean method was the key element in the development of Physics, with its extraordinary successes. Nevertheless the method was later criticized because it led to a view of nature as essentially "simple and orderly," and thus by choosing not to investigate several charac teristics considered as an "impediment," several essential aspects of the phenomenon under investigation might be left out. The Galilean point of view also contains an acknowledgement of the central role played by the causal nexus among phenomena. The mechanistic-deterministic de scription of reality - for instance, a la Laplace - although acknowledging that it is not possible to predict phenomena exactly owing to unavoid able measurement error, is based on the recognition of the their causal nature, even in an ontological sense. Consequently, deterministic predic tion became the methodological fulcrum of mathematical physics. But although mechanistic determinism has had and, in many cases, still has, considerable success in Physics, in other branches of science this situa tion is much less favourable."