  The role of continua has been clear since antiquity in the mathematical
approaches to physics, while discrete manifolds were brought to the limelight
mostly by Quantum and Information Theories, in the XX century. We first recall
how theorizing and measuring radically change in physics when using discrete
vs. continuous mathematical manifolds. It will follow that the reference to
discrete structures and digital information is far from neutral in knowledge
construction. In biology, in particular, the introduction of information as a
new observable on discrete data types has been promoting a dramatic
reorganization of the tools for knowledge. We briefly analyze the origin and
the nature, then some consequences of the bias thus induced in life sciences,
with particular emphasis on research on cancer. We finally summarize new
theoretical frames that propose different directions as for the organizing
principles for biological thinking and experimenting, including in cancer
research. Cancer is now viewed as an organismal, tissue based issue, according
to the perspective proposed in (Sonnenschein, Soto, 1999; Baker, 2015).
