The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
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The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
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Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#2This article was written in 2014 and I do not know if the specifics are still true. However, I think mathematicians and biologists work in two different levels of abstraction.
One is a lawful good with occasional venture into chaotic good, only to reform the chaos. The other is a true neutral with lot of expeditions into chaotic evil just for fun.
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#3This article was written in 2014 and I do not know if the specifics are still true. However, I think mathematicians and biologists work in two different levels of abstraction. One is a lawful good with occasional venture into chaotic good, only to reform the chaos. The other is a true neutral with lot of expeditions into chaotic evil just for fun.
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Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#4[deleted]
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#5Discussed at the time:
The two cultures of mathematics and biology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8819811 - Dec 2014 (69 comments)
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#6There are currently 251131639 sequenced proteins in UniProt[^1], so, that's a very lower bound on the number of things a modern biologist has to amuse themselves with. Many still consider biology as the study of each individual biological organism, system, or protein. But since there are so many of those, I argue that biology must become a science of methods of understanding, and not a science of bare understanding. It's the difference between a company that produces mining machinery and a company that sends miners with pick and shovel underground. And that transformation is going to require for biologists to become system scientists and engineers, steeped to the brim in math, biochemistry and computer sciences.
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#7There are currently 251131639 sequenced proteins in UniProt[^1], so, that's a very lower bound on the number of things a modern biologist has to amuse themselves with. Many still consider biology as the study of each individual biological organism, system, or protein. But since there are so many of those, I argue that biology must become a science of methods of understanding, and not a science of bare understanding.…
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Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#8This article was written in 2014 and I do not know if the specifics are still true. However, I think mathematicians and biologists work in two different levels of abstraction. One is a lawful good with occasional venture into chaotic good, only to reform the chaos. The other is a true neutral with lot of expeditions into chaotic evil just for fun.
Well, it's 2024, I'm a biologist, I read the thing about schemes, and I still don't understand what they are or how they would help me understand biology any better.
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#9There are currently 251131639 sequenced proteins in UniProt[^1], so, that's a very lower bound on the number of things a modern biologist has to amuse themselves with. Many still consider biology as the study of each individual biological organism, system, or protein. But since there are so many of those, I argue that biology must become a science of methods of understanding, and not a science of bare understanding.…
There is an element to this, but at the same time things tend to get incredibly messy at the level of whole complex organisms. (Btw., that also holds for mining/geology: you can do a lot of complex measurements from the surface, drill some holes and still be wrong about what you encounter underground).
Re: The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)
#10There are currently 251131639 sequenced proteins in UniProt[^1], so, that's a very lower bound on the number of things a modern biologist has to amuse themselves with. Many still consider biology as the study of each individual biological organism, system, or protein. But since there are so many of those, I argue that biology must become a science of methods of understanding, and not a science of bare understanding.…
Why is there any science at all above pure maths? Why isn't physics, chemistry, geology etc etc just maths?
That's because choosing the right level of abstraction is really important for making practical progress.
For example penicillin was discovered and used to save millions of lives without any rigorous mathematical understanding of how the drug interacts with it's target.
I'm not saying maths isn't incredibly useful and increasingly important in the study of biology, I'm just saying that approaches that don't need maths ( beyond simple counting et al ) are also very important as well - biology is so complex, it's too easy to get bogged down in the detail.
Also I do wonder sometimes whether mathematicians don't actually understand some of the maths they work on - they can follow the mathematical logic but can't "see it". ie then find their way through the logic maze by following a logical thread in the darkness - better than stumbling around randomly - but it doesn't mean you understand the maze - and because they don't understand it beyond the 'following the logical thread' they can't communicate it to others.
Perhaps the latter is unfair - I'm not a mathematician - I'd be interested to hear other views on that.