This headline over at ScienceDaily got me chuckling: Biology May Not Be So Complex After All, Physicist Finds. I’m not a biologist, but I’m almost certain most biologists encountering that would think, Huh? I like the “Physicists Finds.” The parable of the blind men and the elephant came to mind. Perhaps the physicist has the hind end in his grasp and has concluded that “biology” simply consist of two symmetrical parts bifurcated by a . . . I’ll leave it there.
But wait a minute. Am I being fair? What did the physicist discover?
Emory biophysicist Ilya Nemenman has identified parameters for several biochemical networks that distill the entire behavior of these systems into simple equivalent dynamics.
Hmm. Further down in the piece I think I learned that Nemenman has basically discovered an aggregate property of a number of biological systems. Which is something. Perhaps something very important. But I wonder. At this point wouldn’t it be more accurate to state that the physicist has discovered biology may be easier to describe/model “after all”? For there is a difference. And to the philosophically-inclined, that different is no quibble.
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Tags: biology, philosophy, semantics
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