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by xaa
3399 days ago
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I agree that the problem is complex systems, not biology per se. But physics is able to be quite predictive because it is able to isolate one basic phenomenon at a time and model it with great precision (gravity, electromagnetism, particle physics, etc). Then, if we want to build devices based on these phenomena from the ground up, we can also do that and predict their behavior with great accuracy (e.g., behavior of a electrical circuit). This is not currently possible at all in biology because even the most minimal functional, self-reproducing biological system is very complex. Indeed even a single protein is quite complex. I suppose by "complex" in this context I mean: lots of acting entities, and many physical laws operating at once rather than just a few. Physics does have predictive problems when it is applied to weather, climate, etc, because those are complex systems. But that kind of the thing is a minority of the subject matter in physics. |
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There is a far greater number of humans working in applied physics than in characterizing isolated aspects of theoretical systems so I'd question how you judged "minority" there :)
Perhaps our disagreement is just in choice of words. The idea that "physics", and all that encompasses, is somehow more predictive than a subset of biology was what triggered my response. If instead you said we have excellent models for simple questions in particle physics, we may have agreed :)
As I mentioned on a sibling comment, a simple question like "how an organism will evolve" is of course enormously complex, and if we're going to evaluate the "squishiness" of our answers to it, it's better compared to our ability to predict specific storms a year in advance or how a protoplanetary disk will evolve into a specific configuration of planets. We don't cite those as squishy because we recognize the complexity of the systems involved (and the relative primitiveness of our models).