What separates biological and physical sciences? I can trace my thinking about this to when I sat by the Botany Pond at the University of Chicago in 1997. Originally conceived as a laboratory for botanists more than 100 years ago, and subsequently remodeled as a small park, the Botany Pond was a site of one of my courses in the spring of 1997. Spurred by one of the first warm days after a typically freezing Chicago winter, we sat by the side of the Botany Pond for an evolutionary biology seminar with Leigh Van Valen. He was an evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, ecologist, and philosopher, known for multiple fundamental contributions to evolutionary biology. His office and nearby seminar room were a labyrinth of books, impossible to navigate and impressive to all who visited him, particularly to precocious students who quickly learned that no subject was of disinterest to this self-described “generalist.” On this day, Van Valen talked of evolution and entropy seamlessly. The connections were new to me, having learned biology and physics on the opposite sides of campus, but naturally intuitive. The evolutionary physics that I aim to develop here can be traced to that time at the Botany Pond.
Molecular paradox redux.
Molecular paradox redux.
Molecular paradox redux.
What separates biological and physical sciences? I can trace my thinking about this to when I sat by the Botany Pond at the University of Chicago in 1997. Originally conceived as a laboratory for botanists more than 100 years ago, and subsequently remodeled as a small park, the Botany Pond was a site of one of my courses in the spring of 1997. Spurred by one of the first warm days after a typically freezing Chicago winter, we sat by the side of the Botany Pond for an evolutionary biology seminar with Leigh Van Valen. He was an evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, ecologist, and philosopher, known for multiple fundamental contributions to evolutionary biology. His office and nearby seminar room were a labyrinth of books, impossible to navigate and impressive to all who visited him, particularly to precocious students who quickly learned that no subject was of disinterest to this self-described “generalist.” On this day, Van Valen talked of evolution and entropy seamlessly. The connections were new to me, having learned biology and physics on the opposite sides of campus, but naturally intuitive. The evolutionary physics that I aim to develop here can be traced to that time at the Botany Pond.