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The Only Way Is Up

  • Conference paper
FM 2011: Formal Methods (FM 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 6664))

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Abstract

We draw an analogy between biology and computer hardware systems and argue for the need of a tower of abstractions to tame complexity of living systems. Much like in hardware design, where engineers use a tower of abstractions to produce the most complex man-made systems, we stress that in reverse engineering of biological systems; only by using a tower of abstractions we would be able to understand the “program of life”.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK

    Jasmin Fisher

  2. University of Leicester, UK

    Nir Piterman

  3. Rice University, USA

    Moshe Y. Vardi

Authors
  1. Jasmin Fisher
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  2. Nir Piterman
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  3. Moshe Y. Vardi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southampton, UK

    Michael Butler

  2. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Wolfram Schulte

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Fisher, J., Piterman, N., Vardi, M.Y. (2011). The Only Way Is Up. In: Butler, M., Schulte, W. (eds) FM 2011: Formal Methods. FM 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6664. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21437-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21437-0_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-21436-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-21437-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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