Taxonomy of non-mechanistic models in biology

Mechanistic models in molecular cell biology explain complicated phenomena like nutrient sensing or apoptosis by decomposing them into:

• the molecules (receptor A, kinase B, cell membrane…)
• how these molecules act on each other (A dimerizes, B phosphorylates C, D undergoes conformation change…)

A circle-and-arrow chart of these molecules is called the mechanism. Knowing mechanisms is useful for many things, like for example picking targets for a therapeutic intervention.

In contrast, many other models are non-mechanistic. Non-mechanistic models abstract away molecules and interactions because they are unknown, irrelevant, or too complicated to model. Instead, these models introduce higher-level abstractions. These abstractions are also