The view of biology often presented to the public is oversimplified and out of date. Scientists must set the record straight, argues a new book.

Review of 2023 book: How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball. ISBN9781529095999

  • jaycifer
    1•11 months ago

    I think the difference here is between your conception that reality follows a mathematical model while their conception is that mathematical models follow and try to be reflective of reality.

    I think their concern is that, if one believes reality follows math, when the model fails to accurately predict something, the person with the model may wonder what’s wrong with reality. If that person believed the model follows reality they would wonder what’s wrong with the model. The latter perspective will yield better results.

    It’s the difference between saying “this is how it works” vs “to the best of my knowledge this is how it works.”

    • @Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
      0•10 months ago

      That’s ridiculous, if I think that one apple plus one apple is going to result in three apples then I try it and find it’s actually two I’m not going to blame the universe I’m going to know my understanding of arithmetic is flawed.

      It’s not the math of the human made model that controls the universe that would be silly. The model is the current best approximation of the actual math that defines the universe.

      An accurate model allows you to predict the outcome of events, like we can predict how many apples will be in the bag. With some things it gets very complicated because there’s lots of things and various possible states but we can model that with statistics and calculous and stuff. We can even make a set of all possibile results and use that as a map to tell us if something is possible, how likely it is and what we can do to make it more or less likely - nothing the guy said was controversial, we can map cellar interactions even if that requires using complex multidimensional math (mathematics have had to get used to doing this sort of math a lot recently so I’m sure they’ll manage)

      • jaycifer
        1•10 months ago

        Did you start with the arithmetic that putting one apple in the bag followed by another would leas there being so many, or did you consistently observe that doing so led to there being two apples until your mind learned the math of 1+1=2?

        I think this really comes down to your opinion on whether math was created or discovered. Based on your statements so far I’m guessing you believe math was discovered, as there is some mathematical model completely representative of reality. Through observation we can discover mathematic principles to get closer and closer to that model, not that it would necessarily be 100% achieved. I realize that may be putting words in your mouth, but it’s the best argument I can think of to reach your perspective. Is that about right?