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> I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names: the Golgi apparatus and the Krebs cycle; mitosis, meiosis; DNA, RNA, mRNA, tR

> I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names: the Golgi apparatus and the Krebs cycle; mitosis, meiosis; DNA, RNA, mRNA, tRNA. You just had bad teachers. The subject is all at once beautiful, bizarre, fascinating, daunting, mysterious, majestic, labyrinthine, and awe-inspiring. We are solutions along a physical, biogeochemical optimization gradient. We're fit to the world around us like a glove. We're also distributed systems. Every sub-component of every single one of our cells is a computational system in flux, dynamically adjusting to trillions of inputs every single second. Even the packing of "junk DNA" is a calculated encoding of spatiotemporal expression dynamics and far downstream behavior. We are the universe encoding behavior unto itself. Exchanging gasses, assembling polymers, replicating, carefully kept in balance. Battling against other systems attempting to utilize the same energy gradients. > I think we also need inspiration. There is a romance in biology, as in any other science, that a movie like Good Will Hunting could bring out. We need heroes. Whoever delivers us from this pandemic in the form of a slam dunk vaccine, or a cheap quick reliable test, should become a household name, not for their own glory but for our kids—a Feynman for them to dream about someday becoming. Biology doesn't have the rockets or the fancy computers, but it stands to one day unlock some of the best things for humanity: a world free of diseases, long lives, and perhaps one day, even immortality. The only reason it's not sexier is that it's still in the punch card phases. We're just starting to scratch the surface of the computers that make up ourselves.

ArtsiomH 3y ago
> You just had bad teachers. The subject is all at once beautiful, bizarre, fascinating, daunting, mysterious, majestic, labyrinthine, and awe-inspiring. This. I'd say it applies to a lot, If not all subjects. In my experience teachers rarely explained, why we need the subject, and what's it's use. Now I see myself digging thing on my own, and realising how cool a lot of subjects are.
- jononomo 3y ago
  No. Biology is unique in the sense that life is the creation of God and is far more complex and awe-inspiring than any other subject.
  - Jerrrry 3y ago
    Newton remarked that what colors leaves green would always be a mystery to all but our great Creator, Jesus Christ, the father. Turns out, its chlorophyll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
    - jononomo 3y ago
      Yes, I bite the bullet on the God of the Gaps. What I object to is materialism of the gaps. At least God has explanatory power. Materialism does not.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        > God has explanatory power For a hypothesis to have explanatory power, it must be falsifiable. Otherwise, it's compatible with literally anything and hence can explain nothing. What observation in your mind would falsify the existence of God?
        mistermann 3y ago
        > Otherwise, it's compatible with literally anything > and hence can explain nothing. Could you explain your reasoning here?
        pfdietz 3y ago
        An explanation for why X is true must also be an explanation of why not X is false. But God could perfectly well explain why not X is true and X is false. If God has no predictive power, if it's consistent with anything, it can't be used to distinguish between any possibilities, and hence can't explain why they should hold.
        mistermann 3y ago
        A problem: there is no requirement for explanations to be true. In fact, untrue explanations are very often preferred, if not ~mandatory.
- ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
  > In my experience teachers rarely explained, why we need the subject, and what's it's use. That's exactly the opposite of being "beautiful, bizarre, fascinating, daunting, mysterious, majestic, labyrinthine, and awe-inspiring".
a_bonobo 3y ago
OP's article lists the Krebs cycle as an example, to me the Krebs Cycle is a prime example of how not to teach biology. Most high schools and every biology course uses the cycle as a milestone of learning, but usually teaches it by pure rote learning, words that have no meaning. Oxaloacetate turns into citrate via the citrate synthase and Acetyl CoA (I had to look this up; of course I learned it three times by heart and forgot immediately after the exam). Most of my teachers taught it like this, a meaningless collection of words and steps that you have to rote learn. Except for my microbiology professor! We spent a semester learning about the basics of biochemistry, why reactions have to happen the way they happen, until we all had a relatively clear logic. We learned the Krebs cycle at the end, as a special kind of application and use case of the inherent logic. We want to 'reactivate' NAD+ into NADH, so we need an H+. But look at our Malate! There's a nice H dangling there in the OH group. Hs are taken off by dehydrogenases because they de- the hydrogen, so surely our helper is called the malate dehydrogenase. And it is! What happens to an O that has it's H taken away? the most usual outcome is a double-binded O. Which is why our oxaloacetate looks the way it does. If you know what malate looks like you know what oxaloacetate looks like. (And so on). Of course you can't explain the entire cycle and its terms this way, as names like malate are there for historic reasons, but it gets you far closer to the inherent beauty of the thing. It's just a pity it's usually taught by rote.

ArtsiomH 3y ago

> You just had bad teachers. The subject is all at once beautiful, bizarre, fascinating, daunting, mysterious, majestic, labyrinthine, and awe-inspiring. This. I'd say it applies to a lot, If not all subjects. In my experience teachers rarely explained, why we need the subject, and what's it's use. Now I see myself digging thing on my own, and realising how cool a lot of subjects are.

jononomo 3y ago
No. Biology is unique in the sense that life is the creation of God and is far more complex and awe-inspiring than any other subject.
- Jerrrry 3y ago
  Newton remarked that what colors leaves green would always be a mystery to all but our great Creator, Jesus Christ, the father. Turns out, its chlorophyll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
  - jononomo 3y ago
    Yes, I bite the bullet on the God of the Gaps. What I object to is materialism of the gaps. At least God has explanatory power. Materialism does not.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      > God has explanatory power For a hypothesis to have explanatory power, it must be falsifiable. Otherwise, it's compatible with literally anything and hence can explain nothing. What observation in your mind would falsify the existence of God?
      - mistermann 3y ago
        > Otherwise, it's compatible with literally anything > and hence can explain nothing. Could you explain your reasoning here?
        pfdietz 3y ago
        An explanation for why X is true must also be an explanation of why not X is false. But God could perfectly well explain why not X is true and X is false. If God has no predictive power, if it's consistent with anything, it can't be used to distinguish between any possibilities, and hence can't explain why they should hold.
        mistermann 3y ago
        A problem: there is no requirement for explanations to be true. In fact, untrue explanations are very often preferred, if not ~mandatory.
ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
> In my experience teachers rarely explained, why we need the subject, and what's it's use. That's exactly the opposite of being "beautiful, bizarre, fascinating, daunting, mysterious, majestic, labyrinthine, and awe-inspiring".

a_bonobo 3y ago

OP's article lists the Krebs cycle as an example, to me the Krebs Cycle is a prime example of how not to teach biology. Most high schools and every biology course uses the cycle as a milestone of learning, but usually teaches it by pure rote learning, words that have no meaning. Oxaloacetate turns into citrate via the citrate synthase and Acetyl CoA (I had to look this up; of course I learned it three times by heart and forgot immediately after the exam). Most of my teachers taught it like this, a meaningless collection of words and steps that you have to rote learn. Except for my microbiology professor! We spent a semester learning about the basics of biochemistry, why reactions have to happen the way they happen, until we all had a relatively clear logic. We learned the Krebs cycle at the end, as a special kind of application and use case of the inherent logic. We want to 'reactivate' NAD+ into NADH, so we need an H+. But look at our Malate! There's a nice H dangling there in the OH group. Hs are taken off by dehydrogenases because they de- the hydrogen, so surely our helper is called the malate dehydrogenase. And it is! What happens to an O that has it's H taken away? the most usual outcome is a double-binded O. Which is why our oxaloacetate looks the way it does. If you know what malate looks like you know what oxaloacetate looks like. (And so on). Of course you can't explain the entire cycle and its terms this way, as names like malate are there for historic reasons, but it gets you far closer to the inherent beauty of the thing. It's just a pity it's usually taught by rote.