SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY: Two Faces of Living Form in Health and Disease

This book explores biological organization through the interplay of spatial and temporal regularities and differences. Rather than treating living form as merely symmetric or disease as a simple loss of order, the authors examine how symmetry, asymmetry, chirality, gradients, and rhythms interact to create vital function. Using the cardiovascular system as a primary model, the text follows these principles across five scales: from the homochirality of DNA and molecular motors, through cellular dyads and organ-level laterality, to the hemodynamics and electrophysiology of the beating heart. The work examines why identical mechanisms yield starkly different configurations in health and disease—such as the divergent clinical courses of complete mirror inversion versus isomerism, the prognostic implications of ventricular sphericity, and the remodeling driven by dyssynchrony. Emphasizing the irreversible arrow of biological time, it addresses the limits of mechanistic continuity, the diagnostic application of Curie’s principle, and the hypothesis of Disease Optimality. The volume synthesizes theoretical biology with bedside cardiology to demonstrate how restoring disrupted temporal or structural configurations informs effective clinical practice.