Where Is Joel?

I read an article a while ago with the premise that people who people who drank to excess occasionally gained more weight on average than people who drank in moderation frequently. The authors were unable to explain this “phenomenon”. What this tells me is the authors didn’t think very hard or have never been out drinking. In my mind the answer is obvious, people eat lots of junk food when they’ve drank to excess.

Think about last time you were out for a big night at the bar, I bet all you wanted when you got home was pizza, a donair or some other junk food. To all scientists: Think more!

I was planning on writing tonight about how high throughput proteomic methods are changing the way we do chemistry. I however got into an argument tonight with regards to the validity of Chemistry and Biology as sciences. I may have written about this before, but this will be the last definitive post I create on the matter and henceforth instead of arguing with people I will send them here.

The argument presented by my friend was two pronged, the first was that Chemistry and Biology could be explained by way of Physics, the second was that Physics is the only “provable” science. These arguments are the ones frequently presented in defence of this thesis so I will address them both. The first is argument misses the point of science and the second is actually just incorrect.

Physics explains Chemistry explains Biology:
To some extent this is true. The existence of quarks certainly adds to our understanding of atoms, but trying to explain a chemical reaction in terms of quarks would be an exercise in frustration. The systems function on vastly different levels. If knowledge of how chemical reactions occur is not sufficient to understanding the development of cancer because the system is too unbelievably complex in terms of chemical reactions to possibly explain on this level. The fact that complex system can easily defy explanation is illustrated eloquently here. We cannot easily solve this triple-double pendulum problem based on theories designed to solve it. What hope would we have if we started with subatomic forces?? The abstraction of biology is needed to allow us to tackle problems that are impossible to even conceive of at a purely chemical level.

Physics is the only provable science:
This doesn’t even really make sense. A proof shows that something holds 100% all of the time. Induction creates proofs. Proofs are for math. In science it is virtually impossible to actually prove any sort of “law”.

Lets take a look at one of the most sacred law of science, the universal law of gravitation:
F = G*m1*m2/R^2. Or rather force is proportional to the inverse of the square distance. We are taught this as fact in school. What makes it fact? We can’t explain it. In fact all that supports it is that it works every time we test it. We just haven’t found an exception yet. Mountains and mountains of data support that this is in fact true. We have put it to use countless times since it’s inception. It is thus *very very very* likely that at this point in time in the part of the universe observable by earth this holds true. It’s certainly not proven.

Biology and chemistry are much the same. They are based on theories that have been built upon volumes of data.

I was going to write more, but I’m tired. So I’ll finish by saying that in reality the lines between these sciences can actually in the end be very blurry and that there is in fact a ton of overlap between work done by many of the chemists, biologists and physicist in the world are actually doing.

Bed time. QED Bitches.

I wrote about this just a few short posts ago, how a species might evolve such that individuals made would make decisions that were bad for their chances of passing on their own genes such that the species would have a better chances of continuing it’s own genetic lineage. I mentioned this manifests itself in our own altruistic tendencies. It seems like someone else had the same idea.

I a recent paper on unicolonial ants (ants that form super colonies with multiple queens where the ants rear babies with little to no genetic resemblance to themselves.) Helanterä et. al. demonstrate this exact same principle and challenge the generally accepted theory that evolution functions purely on the level of the individual with our actions be designed to pass on the maximum amount of our own genome. (ie. if helping our brother have 10 babies makes us have one less that might be genetically advantageous to passing on our own genes.)

It’s nice to be validated.