I have a cosmological post brewing, so I thought I would touch on a slightly different topic, namely the question of "could physics predict a giraffe?" The following has the usual "buyer beware" clauses; I am a physicist, an astrophysicist at that, and not a chemist, or a biologist, and definitely no a philosopher of science, although I may end up annoying all of them. To start with, let's look at the subject, to wit, a giraffe. The reason for the post is because of an article over at The Curious Wavefunction titled Why biology (and chemistry) is not physics. The basic argument is this; Physics is a fundamental science, and identified the basic workings of the Universe. How do nuclei hold themselves together, how does the Universe expand, why do electrons flow through conductors etc etc. That's physics. Now, physics is "reductionist", in that all complex processes can be broken down into a the application of relatively simple underlying phy
Personally, this "big science" idea doesn't appeal to me at all. I'd much rather potter away in a corner on my own things. Which require me to program well.
ReplyDeleteBut you have big science papers - with monitoring of quasars for reverberation mapping!
DeleteTouche. :) They aren't the ones that I identify myself with, but they are some of the most cited.
DeleteAh! So, you outsource your Big Science! :)
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