Is Biology a High-Tech Science or Just Observations in a Field?

[Monique]

This is about your opinion, how do you feel about biology.

Do you think the topic is high-tech science, or do you feel it is just people working outside in a field, writing down their observations?

 

[Another God]

i don't think it started as such, but Biology has become/is becoming the ULTIMATE High Technology field. We are still deep in the observation/learning stage. Still learning how it works, what things mean, how things interact etc, but every step of the way we are trying to translate our lessons into technology. As soon as we understand biology, then there will be no other technology. Who needs to create external technology when we can start altering ourselves or other life forms to do things for us?

OK, so there are some obvious limitations to it, but generally, if biology is understood, then no only do we have access to everything we see in nature now (Photosynthesis, Echo Location, Vision, High Energy yield, ability to recycle almost anything, flight, the ability to grow things into the desired shapes (rather than building them)), but we will also eventualy be able to 'evolve' our own designs. Selectively alter gene pools of our own creation to create entirely novel organisms/chemicals/structures/functions.

Biology is the Tech Science of the future.

 

[Monique]

Yes, I was hoping to get some opinions from the physicists here what their image is..

Biological research is carried out on a molecular level with lots of mathematics, I think many people would be surprised by that.

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Another God
Biology is the Tech Science of the future.

Of the future? It already is.

If you are talking on a macro level applications, we are already able to cure people by integrating a new gene in their genome etc.

Mainly I am thinking about the tools that biologists use to perform research. The possibilities are endless.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Well I am sure that chemistry is a "tech science" defined by the fact that your theory can be shot down by an experiment. And molecular biology, so the chemists claim, is just chemstry at the one-molecule-at-a-time level; it's all about chemical bonds between atoms.

However I am not so sure of other branches of biology. Ecology with its ever-proliferating models and shaky predictions looks more like economics or even sociology than like molecular biology.

Ask yourself, is species really a well-defined concept?

 

[Another God]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
However I am not so sure of other branches of biology. Ecology with its ever-proliferating models and shaky predictions looks more like economics or even sociology than like molecular biology.

Ask yourself, is species really a well-defined concept?

Absolutely not. I agree completely. These professions seem to more concerned with continuing the error of forgetting that definitions are human creations designed to allow us to communicate, not entities in themselves. They seem orientated around boxing objects which do not exist in boxes in reality.

In their defence though, there is more to it than that, and they do actually do some practical stuff...

 

[Mike H]

As has already been alluded to in a prior post, there is a wide range of biological research. Some of that is very technically oriented (for example, structural biology) while others is dependent on field research, since that is what is needed (for example, observing animal behavior in its natural habitat). You do what is necessary to solve the questions you're interested in answering. That is, ultimately, what all scientists end up doing sooner or later.

As for species being a well defined term, well, that is half the fun. People need something to debate, after all. ;)