In "Globalization, Scientific Lexicons, and the Future of Biology," Keller observes that biology has in the past been a noun-based science and claims that twenty-first-century biology should progress to being a verb-based science. According to her, a more appropriate language framework is needed for biology because, as with systems biology, it cannot be understood if ontological priority is given to the parts rather than to the whole.
In fact, this claim is nothing new to those people who assert that the correct methodological basis for systems biology is a holistic rather than an analytic approach. Moreover, her focus on the dynamic interactivity between the part and the whole, given that the research of molecular biologists today delves more deeply into the processes that entities are engaged in than into the entities themselves, seems neither novel nor timely. (She acknowledges this point in the last paragraph: "In fact, it is just such processes that modern biologists spend their time trying to unravel. What is new is the emphasis.") What makes Keller's point interesting, original, and even bold, however, is her carefully thought-out basis for making a holistic approach to biology more convincing.
