So what do we really mean when we say that systems biology is holistic?

Background: An old debate has undergone a resurgence in systems biology: that of reductionism versus holism. At least 35 articles in the systems biology literature since 2003 have touched on this issue. The histories of holism and reductionism in the philosophy of biology are reviewed, and the current debate in systems biology is placed in context. Results: Inter-theoretic reductionism in the strict sense envisaged by its creators from the 1930s to the 1960s is largely impractical in biology, and was effectively abandoned by the early 1970s in favour of a more piecemeal approach using individual reductive explanations. Classical holism was a stillborn theory of the 1920s, but the term survived in several fields as a loose umbrella designation for various kinds of anti-reductionism which often differ markedly. Several of these different anti-reductionisms are on display in the holistic rhetoric of the recent systems biology literature. This debate also coincides with a time when interesting arguments are being proposed within the philosophy of biology for a new kind of reductionism. Conclusions: Engaging more deeply with these issues should sharpen our ideas concerning the philosophy of systems biology and its future best methodology. As with previous decisive moments in the history of biology, only those theories that immediately suggest relatively easy experiments will be winners

Dynamic volatility and external security related shocks: The case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper analyses the impact of exogenous national security related shocks on the time-varying volatility structure of the Greek stock market. Alternative autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are estimated, in order to identify the best fit that adequately describes return volatility behavior, testing symmetric as well as asymmetric innovation responses. An external national security related shock factor is included as well as a military crisis dummy, in order to depict possible implications for the conditional variance. The empirical findings appear to support a statistically significant impact of both national security related factors on the Athens stock market returns. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Dynamic volatility and external security related shocks: The case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper analyses the impact of exogenous national security related shocks on the time-varying volatility structure of the Greek stock market. Alternative autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are estimated, in order to identify the best fit that adequately describes return volatility behavior, testing symmetric as well as asymmetric innovation responses. An external national security related shock factor is included as well as a military crisis dummy, in order to depict possible implications for the conditional variance. The empirical findings appear to support a statistically significant impact of both national security related factors on the Athens stock market returns. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Are “new” and “old” EU members becoming more financially integrated? A threshold cointegration analysis

Financial integration, Threshold vector error-correction, “New” EU member states, F36, P33,