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This is true at the surface level. However, biological systems are organized by principles. Source: degrees in both fields. Memorizing large numbers of facts g
by stochastic_monk 8y ago
This is true at the surface level. However, biological systems are organized by principles. Source: degrees in both fields.
Memorizing large numbers of facts give way to understanding and intuition in my experience.
It’s quite similar to how a chess player’s experience regarding strategy starts out by exhaustively enumerating potential futures and eventually turns into an intuitive understanding of future plays and how training a neural network leads to a high dimensional manifold representation of a concept.
- sooheon 8y agoIsn't it at least literally true that biology encompasses all of physics, plus some added complexity/emergence on top of that?
- skuzye 8y agoBiology is a huge field so I don't mean to speak for all of them. My wife is doing a PhD in Immunology so I know that at least for her, she's thinking in a whole different abstraction level. She's not that concerned about the physics in her day to day experiments.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoGood point. It really depends on what area in biology you're in. For immunology, pathology, and, honestly, most subfields, you're closer to phenomenology than emergence. I will say that I'm skeptical of a lot of the work done in biology in relation to networks and complexity. It's often either done by those without sufficient mathematical background (and, typically, wholly statistically invalid) or a bunch of hand-wavy, feel-good nonsense for a sexy tagline by those who should know better. Better work is done by researchers in complexity who analyze biological systems.