Biological thinking ~ Why do you need biological thinking ~33

In this section, the author begins to discuss why biological thinking has become one of the two most important ways of thinking, and what are the characteristics and advantages of biological thinking compared with classical physical thinking. The physical thinking that pursues the unified theory and the biological thinking that pays attention to the diversity theory seem to be independent of each other, or even antagonistic, but the author thinks that they can be combined, that is, what we really need is the biological thinking tempered by physical thinking.

Complex technology system is closer to biological system, so it is a good choice to think about complex technology with biological thinking. In order to understand the system as a whole, we will also ignore some details. At this time, physical thinking is the first choice. What we really need is biological thinking exercised by physical thinking.

In the middle of the17th century, a British doctor named Nathanael Fairfax published several papers in the scientific journal Philosophy. Fairfax observed some interesting phenomena and decided to tell contemporary scientists his findings through these papers.

One of the papers is entitled "An example of the subtle influence of human natural characteristics: whether it is for people or barbarians". In this paper, Fairfax tells the story of a man who is about 40 years old and used to drinking hot beer. One day, the man fell ill after drinking a glass of cold beer and died a few days later. Fairfax speculated that the human stomach can only adapt to a certain range of temperature. Fairfax also wrote a story about a woman: every time she heard thunder, she felt sick. However, Fairfax did not speculate why the thunder had such an effect on this lady, but pointed out: "This lady has been like this since she was a child."

We now know that although Fairfax failed to achieve his goal-to sum up some theory from these recorded observations and facts, his observation itself is extremely valuable, at least it is the first step of "understanding". Recording various phenomena is also a necessary step in scientific research.

At the same time, young Newton was thinking about how objects move and how light propagates. When Newton was studying at Trinity College, Cambridge University, a plague swept across Britain. In order to prevent the epidemic, Cambridge University was temporarily closed. So Newton returned to his hometown and lived in the countryside of Woolsop for several years. It was during that period that he made fundamental progress in calculus, optics and the laws of planetary motion. He studied mathematical reasoning and calculus, and did some experiments, such as inserting a long needle into his eye socket to analyze the nature of color, observing how apples fell from trees, and so on. Like Fairfax, Newton classified and catalogued the observed materials; The difference is that Newton also summed up a set of laws governing the physical world and described them with mathematical formulas.

In a sense, we can say that the different studies conducted by Fairfax and Newton in the same period and country represent two ways to understand the complexity of the universe, and there is still a competitive relationship between the two ways. In the early years, the scientific community focused on physical thinking, and it was not until many things in modern times could not be explained by classical theories that biological thinking developed rapidly.

Newton tried to unify all the different things he observed, that is, to simplify the variability and diversity of the world through a set of elegant explanations. Usually he just uses a few formulas or laws. We can see this clearly in Newton's law of universal gravitation. This minimalist formula reflects the universal laws of many phenomena, such as falling body, ebb tide and planetary falling. Today, physicists are tirelessly exploring the theory of the universe that can unify the whole world because of the same vision as Newton, hoping to find the order that can be the basis of all aspects of the universe known to mankind; And let every component of the universe belong to its place and put them in its proper place. Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist, famously said that "the great tragedy of science" is "the assumption that ugly facts often kill beauty". What he means is that elegant theory is the goal of science. When something contradicts or complicates elegant theory, science will encounter the greatest tragedy. Pursuing elegance may be the thinking tendency of scientists and intellectuals, but many things in reality cannot be so simplified. Let's coexist.

Fairfax abandoned the pursuit of theoretical elegance and embraced diversity and complexity instead. Even if the world is chaotic to a certain extent, he is willing to accept it and rejoices in "learning new details again", even if these details are difficult to be integrated into a single theoretical framework at once. Scientists who didn't follow the crowd were also very powerful at that time. Some people nicknamed his method "butterfly collector", that is, collecting all kinds of "butterflies" and describing them. Here, we can also find the shadow of modern doctors, who are the intellectual descendants of Fairfax and marvel at the perfect functions of all levels of the human body, such as the complex steps in the process of blood coagulation, the complex nature of enzyme cascade reaction and so on; Those astronomers will be deeply attracted by the many types of galaxies revealed by the powerful space telescope. Respect for objective facts and observation of records are very suitable for modern society.

Naturalists can't agree with Huxley's complaint, because in their view, there is no so-called "ugly fact". All the facts and knowledge provide us with new information about this wonderful world and show us the complexity and diversity of the world. There is no need to feel depressed when the facts do not conform to our mental model; On the contrary, we should be sincerely happy with this "accident" and then find new ways to explain these "accidents". Instead, I feel happy and magical. The progress of human science and technology depends on these optimistic and curious scientists.

Physicist Freeman Dyson described Newton's method as a scientific way of thinking in ancient Athens, believing that this way of thinking "emphasizes ideas and theories ... trying to find a unified theory that can connect everything in the universe". As for the method of paying attention to diversity, Dyson thinks it is a scientific way of thinking in the era of industrial revolution, "emphasizing facts and things and trying to explore and expand human cognition of natural diversity." For example, the British industrial revolution originated in Manchester.

Dyson further pointed out that there is another difference between the two methods, that is, biology is the "territory" of diversity theorists, while physics is the "home" of unified theorists. It is true that scientists in these two disciplines are very different. )

I call these two methods biological thinking and physical thinking respectively here. In physics, people observe the obvious trends of various phenomena through unification and simplification, which can be seen in Einstein, Newton and Maxwell. As we all know, Maxwell gave a formula that can explain the electromagnetic principle. Simplification, even extreme simplification, is one of the methods widely respected in the field of physics. Abstract thinking ability is an essential skill for physicists.

Biologists are usually more willing to accept diversity and tend to show a large number of facts, regardless of whether these facts can be explained by a unified theory. In fact, all they need is a suitable small model. Of course, biological theory is not always the case. For example, Darwin's theory of evolution is obviously a unified force in biology; Many molecular biologists, applied mathematicians who specialize in mathematical biology, and many biologists who study other fields are fascinated by this.

In the final analysis, the above two methods are both seeking a universal and predictable theory. However, the two ways of thinking are moving in different directions, mainly reflected in the relative tolerance of abstraction, which depends on the characteristics and complexity of the system studied. For example, abstracting macro-level details with mathematical formulas is almost ubiquitous in physics, but it is difficult to find in biology. Biology does not let go of any detail, and details often determine many key breakthroughs.

From the following old science joke, we can clearly see this difference. A dairy farmer hired two consultants to increase milk production, one is a biologist and the other is a physicist. After a week's investigation, biologists submitted a detailed report of more than 300 pages, stating what the milk yield of each cow depends on, such as the weather, the size and variety of cows. Moreover, the biologist also assured dairy farmers that the average milk yield of dairy cows could be increased by 3% to 5% as long as the recommendations were strictly followed. The physicist came back after only three hours of investigation, and then claimed that he had found an efficient solution, which could be applied to all cows and could increase milk production by more than 50%. The dairy farmer asked, "So, what do you suggest we do?" "Well," replied the physicist, "first of all, suppose you have a cow with a spherical body ..." (Hahahaha, classic)

Abstract methods are certainly useful, but we can't assume that there are "spherical cows". When you abstract all the details at the biological level, you will not only lose a lot of information, but also feel helpless about some important components, such as boundary conditions. Biological thinking and physical thinking are two different ways to explain the world, which are applicable to different systems and are usually complementary. Complementary thinking is also a sign of a person's mature thinking, and two diametrically opposite things/ideas can be accommodated by his brain.