The goal of the quantitative biology is not to quantify biological phenomena but to unveil fundamental and general principles ruling the phenomena via quantification. To extract relevant information from quantitative data, essential is the concepts and associated quantities that characterize the principles. As such concepts and quantities, we envision that “entropy”,  “information”, and “control” surely play pivotal roles because all biological systems are intrinsically non-equilibrium systems that process and use information to control itself. In addition, natural selection and “fitness” are also crucial to endow biological meaning to these concepts and quantities originating from other field than biology.

In this workshop, we discuss the potential roles of concepts and theories in quantitative biology. By showing recent theoretical advancement on how “entropy”,  “information”, “control”, and “fitness” are mutually related, we also try to draw a prospective picture for the fundamental theory in biology.