Philosophical aspects of defining efficiency for biological systems--an introductory overview

This article introduces six themes that are in active discussion in contemporary philosophy of science. The first theme deals with definitions in general and their role in cardiology in particular. The second theme is on the structure of theory in cardiology. Third, the relationship between theory and experiment is examined, and then, fourthly, the nature of reduction and the relationship between concepts of lower levels and the concepts of higher levels in cardiology is considered. A closely related fifth theme deals with "co-evolution", where progress in cardiology is traced at mutually interactive levels of organization. Finally, I discuss the relationship of evolution and the optimization of cardiac function.