Talk:Theoretical biology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Genetics, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to genetics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this page, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. |
| ??? | This article has not yet received an importance rating. |
 |
Theoretical biology is part of the WikiProject Biology, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to biology on Wikipedia. |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. |
Contents |
[edit] Category:Theoretical biology
Theoretical biology is surely a wide enough field to enjoy its own category, so I've created it. :-)
Currently it just contains the main page and a page I created about the Bak-Sneppen model of species co-evolution, but I'm sure there must be plenty more pages that would fit the bill.
Best wishes, — WebDrake 21:01, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] No interdisciplinary field of academic study
Practically every field of study has a theoretical part, which acquire interdisciplinary study... but this doesn't makes such theoretical studies be called interdisciplinary. --Mdd 23:18, 9 january 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge with Mathematical biology
I'm not sure how mathematical biology is different from theoretical biology, at least in terms of actual research (there is a subtle conceptual difference, I think). Should these two articles be merged? I'd suggesting moving Math bio to be under the title T. bio. Thoughts? --Hansnesse 18:11, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Theoretical biology is about creating general theories and synthesizing information. Mathematical biology can involve theoretical biology, but it can also be more empirically driven and it does not always have the synthesis of results into unified theories as its goal. In practice, when people use the term theoretical biology, they often refer to things like mathematical modeling. Theoretical biology is more philosophical in nature, it probes deeper at times. Mathematical biology evokes subjects such as population biology or modeling individual cells or larger physiological systems, whereas theoretical biology makes me think of things like Stuart Kauffman's views on self-organization, or Jørgensen's attempts at integrating different theories of how ecosystems work. The material currently covered on the two pages seems to strongly reinforce my intuition of these two subjects being distinct, although they are certainly very closely related. Cazort 00:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removed sentence about obsolete...
Removed the following sentence, as this does not represent reality. Theoretical concepts and modelling becomes more and more important in many fields, including Systems_biology and Computational Neuroscience. This sentence was removed: Over recent years the theoretical biologist has become nearly obsolete, as tests prove the impossibility of accurate results where the environment of the observations is not homogeneous.
[edit] Francis Crick
I think the list of theoretical biologists leaves out the most successful theoretical biologist of the last century....Francis Crick, whose work on the structure of DNA, the genetic code, and theoretical work related to the central dogma, and consciousness make him the essential theoretical biologist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.98 (talk) 17:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Theoretical biologists
Shouldn't Charles Darwin be on this? We keep talking about the "theory" of evolution. Am I wrong in thinking of evolution as a biological theory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.195.109.53 (talk) 17:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
