On the other hand, bio is the branch of science with a single accepted "theory of everything": evolution.
Re:Guess I'm a Rationalist Now
by aspenmayer on Thursday June 19, 2025 @08:14PM
(#44323707)
Evolution is a theory of the origin of species via natural selection of heritable traits; evolution is not a theory of biogenesis, the origin of life itself.
Re:Guess I'm a Rationalist Now
by __MatrixMan__ on Thursday June 19, 2025 @10:14PM
(#44324165)
That's a fine counterexample to "theory of everything", and fertile ground for spirited debate. But I think it's a distinction thats relevant to <1% of the work that biologists do, so like... does it matter?
Yeah, I almost wrote ‘nearly have a theory of everything’ for that reason, but decided it wasn’t worth the extra words. We have a few plausible outlines of how life started, and IMO it doesn’t really matter all that much which one(s) actually happened. When we ourselves are doing biogenesis, there’s no requirement that it has to happen the way it happened before. It would be interesting to know, though, so if in your estimation we don’t have a theory of everything because of that, I’m okay with that.
Re:Guess I'm a Rationalist Now
by TheAncientGeek on Friday June 20, 2025 @10:45AM
(#44328204)
Several different definitions are being bandied about. If you think of reduction as understanding a material system in terms of its components, biology is now reductionist, having abandoned vitalism.
Biologists stand out because they have already given up on that idea. They may still seek to simplify complex things by refining principles of some kind, but it's a "whatever stories work best" approach. More Feyerabend, less Popper. Instead of axioms they have these patterns that one notices after failing to find axioms for a while.