Making sense of oxygen; quantum leaps with “physics-iology”

In the first “Guest editorial” published in the July issue of Experimental Physiology, Dr Tulleken spoke to the powers of physiology, stating that, “...it is only physiology that has created an understanding of the body that can usefully guide an individual's approach to their own life” (van Tulleken, 2018). True words indeed, and since the landmark publication of Harvey’s Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in 1628 (Harvey, 1976), physiology’s journey to prominence has been a colourful one. Originally rooted to anatomy and medicine through an organ-system approach, it has since matured into a distinct discipline that has made huge strides by taking an integrated molecular approach to provide ever more refined explanations of macroscopic phenomena and thereby illuminate the cellular and organismal “workings” of the human body. Indeed, we have much to thank Ivan Pavlov, the first physiologist to win the Nobel Prize, for this hypothetica motus, for it is he in 1897 who originally proposed that its future lay in understanding the “physiology of life molecules” (Pavlov, 1955). Yet despite over a century of research, a complete understanding of the complexities underlying physiological processes and systems are, oftentimes, incomplete and lack explanatory power, suggesting that we need to move beyond the “classical” to explore deeper meanings and further unravel how we as humans really work.