Timeline for Does physics explain why the laws and behaviors observed in biology are as they are?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 11:47 | comment | added | Jack Aidley | @BioPhysicist: I don't think physics is either quantum physics or astrophysics, but I do interpret the term "reducible" as an end-point description at the lowest available level. It seems you don't? I have edited to specify "fundamental physics". | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 16:07 | history | edited | Jack Aidley | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 29, 2021 at 15:21 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | Quantum biology is a field that is starting to get some traction. But in any case I don't think the only way to reduce something to physics is to take it all the way to the quantum/particle level. Certainly physicists were doing physics before quantum mechanics was even thought of. But I suppose that is the go-to for many people: physics = either quantum physics or astrophysics | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 15:15 | comment | added | Jack Aidley | @BioPhysicist: You clipped the relevant part from that quote "reducible to physics" that I intend that comment to refer to. It's certainly true that useful biological questions are answered by physics, but they're not reductive in their approach. Physics will tell you a great deal about nerve signalling if you consider membrane potentials, for example, but fully describing a membrane by reducing it to quantum mechanics is impossible. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 14:33 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | even if you were to solve any meaningful biological question in those terms - which is way beyond current abilities - the answer would get would have the wrong framing and explain at the wrong level. This is incorrect. Many biological problems have appropriately been solved using physics. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 12:29 | history | answered | Jack Aidley | CC BY-SA 4.0 |