Periodicals>Journal Article: Dhar, Pawan K. and Giuliani, Alessandro (March, 2010), Laws of biology: why so few?, Syst Synth Biol, Retrieved on 2014-04-30Source Material [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
Folksonomies: theory law Memes
30 APR 2014
Laws in Biology
In scientific jargon, law describes a true, absolute and unchanging relationship among interacting elements. Unlike in some fields, social customs and authorities do not determine the establishment of laws in science. Given that laws are derived from empirical observations, it implies that laws symbolize regularities endorsed by a majority opinion. People also use terms like rules and principles to describe consistent relationships expressed by mathematical equations e.g., Heisenberg uncertai...There are fewer and fewer laws as we move from fundamental sciences, like mathematics and physics, to more complex and chaotic sciences, like chemistry, biology, and climatology.
30 APR 2014
Bottom-Up VS Top-Down Method for Finding Laws
Broadly speaking, to discover new regularities and laws we either follow top–down or the bottom–up approach (Fig. 1). In the top–down approach, the search begins with an external observation e.g., Newton’s laws of motion. The observer intuitively imagines a set of elements, a set of interactions and a mathematically expressible form to connect the two. Components are weaved into a mental map and experiments are planned to verify or nullify the model. If the experimental observations r...Fascinating explanation for why laws are harder and harder to find as we move into macroscopic sciences.