The λ - Based Equilibrium Point ( EP ) Hypothesis 1990 - 1999

How abstract are the ideas required to address biological movement? Consider the question posed by Arthur Winfree (1987, p. 253), the foremost theoretician on temporal order in biology and chemistry: “How does a gymnast calculate forces and rates for hundreds of muscles with millisecond precision while whirling from one maneuver to the next?” For Winfree, the answer is not forthcoming in the language of kinematic and kinetic variables. The gymnast’s reproducible precision is a more flexible exactitude than the kind we know how to write equations about. It is a kind of exactitude best described and reasoned about in geometry, specifically, the type of geometry that ignores conventional geometric properties (e.g., distance and angle). For Winfree, the gymnast’s reproducible precision is a topological exactitude.