The article correctly describes the current flaws in biology research. Today, it is more of observation-based.. Like, you collect tons of data and then infer something (most of the times, unamusing). Rather, our approach should be hypothesis-based. The fields like physics, economics make use of mathematics to abstract the details.. Physics has laws, mathematics has laws.. But biology has only observations.. How can we expect to make huge intellectual leaps in biology without any laws or abstraction.. Why can’t we predict things in biology rather we just describe the observed phenomena..
Today, biologists need a heavy dose of courage and guts to leave the usual and make bold predictions about future. That’s how the field will progress. They are describing every phenomena in detail-and-detail-and-detail.. Can you ever use the knowledge from two distinct field of biology and then combine them to provide some meaningful sentences.. But, we can do that in physics… Combine any field with any other and then invent/predict/innovate…
We, biologists, need to build on existing knowledge and abstract information. And must not probe further and further because the detail will never end.. And further, by doing so, we can never expect to unify biology..
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Gunter Bolbel, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1999 one perfect example to say that biologist do work based on the frame work of logical and rational hypothesis. The theory he proposed for the protein sorting won him the accolade. bilogy is not either physics or for that matter any other subject it needs to know the finest of the finest information which will provide basis for many biomediacl application. At the same time when we talk of function we have to formulate the hypothesis to begin the work.
Hope i am to your comment.
That is all right. But, the point I was trying to make in the post was that the use of mathematics in biology community is not prevalent. The once case you have provided should be a lesson for all of the community. But still most biologists prefer to go into as much of details as possible without making any generalities and then testing the validity of those generalities.