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(03-22-05) how to transform biology into a physics-like discipline?

Lots of mathematics is pouring into biology. But most of them are very specific and can only be applied to certain biological problems. Statistics is the most famous one. It's used almost everywhere in biology. But you can't see universal methods. All of them can be termed as 'application of statistics'. The real new things are very few.

What physics works is making its own theoretical field by defining new terminology and equations for fundamental principle and everything else is built on top of it. Nobody says that the theoretical physics is application of mathematics. Every symbol or equation in physics has physics meaning. The reasoning of any proof is in a physics context. Newton's laws, thermal dynamics, electromagnetcis, quantum physics,.. each of them forms a complete theoretical system within itself.

What biology lacks is such fundamental symbols and equations. (Maybe it's called computational biology, not theoretical biology.) Biology needs these foundations to step into a theoretical phase to gain more insights of the biological phenomena.

Why it's so hard for biology to begin theoretical studies?

First of all, biology is not quantitative, rather qualitative. Second, biology is too complex. Always exceptions. Well, chemistry doesn't have as much as theoretical studies as physics. So, it's still questionable whether biology works in a physics-manner.

I believe at least some parts of biology will display strong theoretical trends in the future. So don't always use mathematical tools as a black box. Try to map symbols to biological meanings.

Yu Huang 2006-03-25

November 2009

Yu S. Huang Homepage, USC MCB/CMB

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(03-22-05) how to transform biology into a physics-like discipline?