The value of stereology in analysing structure and function of cells and organs *
The value of stereology in analysing structure and function of cells and organs *
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体视学在分析细胞和器官的结构和功能方面的价值*
作者：
E. Weibel
I N T R O D U C T I O N询问某个科学分支对社会的相关性已经成为一种时尚，甚至可能是一种义务。纯粹研究的崇高时代似乎已经过去，纯粹研究的唯一目的是促进知识的发展，而不考虑知识的有用性。我们要求社会致力于科学的进步。在过去的几十年里，它也采取了同样的做法，将社会产品的很大一部分投资于支持科学研究，而且这一比例还在不断增加。现在社会需要它的红利：我们作为科学家被要求重新考虑我们努力的最终目标，并致力于我们自己和我们的科学活动，以促进人类和社会的福祉。像体视学这样的理论性、抽象性的领域，似乎离这种承诺特别远。在它存在的短短几年里，它当然没有成为头条新闻，但它仍然更糟：许多科学家甚至不知道这个词，这个词是10年前在德国的一次生物学家和工程师会议上创造的。巴赫，1963年），以统一这些活动已经进行了多年，在广泛分离的领域，如冶金和生物学，所有努力的三维解释切片材料。因此，在我们开始讨论体视学的数学原理和实际应用方法之前，我们似乎应该先考虑一下体视学对促进人类福祉的价值，考虑一下体视学的社会相关性。体视学能否做出任何重要性超过学术努力本身的贡献？这个问题很可能会被问到，因为乍一看，体视学可能只不过是一些数学家的游戏场，他们喜欢以一种不寻常的方式玩弄点集、拓扑参数和概率论，为形态学家提供了进一步的方法来追求他们过时的描述结构的艺术，无论是岩石或金属合金的组成，还是生物器官的组成。我想证明，体视学确实是生物医学研究链中的一个重要环节，涉及维持和保护人类健康。
I N T R O D U C T I O N It has become a fashion, maybe even an obligation, to ask about the relevance of a certain branch of science for society. The noble days of pure research, whose exclusive aim was to advance knowledge without regard to its usefulness, seem over. We have asked society to commit itself to the advancement of science. It has followed suit by investing over the past decades a large and ever-increasing fraction of the social product in the support of scientific research. NOW society demands its dividends : we are asked as scientists to reconsider the ultimate goals of our endeaveour and to commit ourselves and our scientific activity to the advancement of the well-being of mankind, of society. A theoretical, abstract field such as stereology may appear particularly far away from such commitment. It has certainly not made headlines in the short years of its existence, but it is still worse: many scientists don’t even know the word, which was coined 10 years ago at a meeting of biologists and engineers in Germany (cf. Bach, 1963) to unify those activities which had been going on for a number of years in as widely separated fields as metallurgy and biology, all striving for three-dimensional interpretation of sectioned materials. It seems therefore in order that we open this third congress on stereology by considering for a while the value of stereology for the advancement of the well-being of mankind, by considering its social relevance, before we turn to the discussion of its mathematical principles and to methods of practical application. Can stereology make any contributions whose significance surpasses that of academic endeavour for its own sake ? This question may well be asked, because at first glance stereology may appear as nothing more than a play-ground for some mathematicians who like to juggle point sets, topological parameters and probability theory in an unusual way, offering morphologists a further way of pursuing their obsolete art of describing Structures, be it the composition of rocks or of metal alloys, or that of biological organs. I would like to demonstrate that stereology is indeed an important link in the chain of bio-medical research concerned with maintaining and protecting the health of man.