Thanks for the post. I often think engineers should run the world because practical is where the rubber meets the road. There never was anything practical about politics and this is more true than ever before.
You're most probably correct but if you go back far enough then there was a language that was mathematical for a science that was not.
Modern empirical science; Life Sciences, which uses statistical methods to set up experiments, has math leading science. I had my own experience with a mathematician, setting up the black box for one of my innovations. He was assigned to parallel me. I took the approach of an open box, with logical anticipation; knew what to expect. We both reached the same conclusion; worked perfectly, but only my approach had science before math. The management assumed my unique solution would be like a medicine with some side effects, but there were no side effects when science and logic leads. Medicine lets math lead and that horse is based on odds and that builds in side effects at the margins of error.
Math is a tool. It is like a faithful horse than can pull a cart to market. It adds leverage. But consciousness and science is supposed to steer the horse, who pulls cart. That was classic science with the math model coming after you make the theory and plot all the data. The theory helps you to know what types of experiments you need to do.
In my situation, the statisticians was a mathematician, who was not a chemist or engineer, both of which were needed to get the process ready. Even without the special skills needed to get that far, he could still use the black box without ever understanding what I had done. The pitfall of having the horse; math, steer and the driver become a passenger; life science, is the passenger cannot take a new short cut based on reason and common sense. The horse has a given way, over bumps and holes, and you are required to sit back and go along with the same ride everyone else takes; herd effect, with built in side effects; bumps and holes, as a result of the statistical horse leading. It is the black box blind leading the blind; empirical.
Applied science is about science first and the math later, if needed. When I started that development project from scratch, I ran test experiments, but I did not use a statistical horse set up. I would first form a theory, run one experiment, carefully, and I could tell right away; yes, no, or maybe. It gave me a vector or not. Then I change directions 180 or 90 degrees or not. It took me two weeks and I was done and ready to scale up. Good theory allows for speed. This is due to first forming a logic train, so few experiment become necessary. The black box has no logic, so more experiments is always better, but that will be more time consuming and more expensive with the result in the image of the statistical tool; fuzzy.
This discussion is about evolution and the life sciences, both which let the horse steer. The basic theory of evolution is fine, but the math first approach has built in fuzzy dice and falls and short of logical reality. This is caused by this particular math horse; tool. That hammer leads the carpenter.
Water Model of Life
The more logical approach to life and evolution, I developed, is centered on water. This approach simplifies enough to allow logic. There are 50 times as many water molecules, as all the organic molecules, combined in each cell. Water interacts with all of them. Why not simplify by looking at life from the simplicity of one molecule, instead of the complexity of all the organics that parallel?
Water is also the timeless component of life, that did not change, from before and then during abiogenesis, to the present and even into the future. Water is the terminal product of the oxygen and hydrogen flame and is very stable; stable bookend. The same potentials of water were at work and shall be at work, as the organics got, get and shall get more and more complex. At any point in evolution, past to future water was and will be doing very similar physical chemical things; chemical selection at the nanoscale. What was the goal of the water; organic evolution via the 2nd law.
Water and oil; (general terms for the organics of life) do not always form ideal solutions, but rather they create surface tension, which will cause them to gain potential and often separate. When they come together there is a built in repulsion; water and oil. With water being dominant, in numbers and in secondary bonding forces, the organics have to obey; rule 1.
Proteins are folded and packed by water to lower the surface tension of the water; water leads. This also lowers the protein entropy against the second law. The removal of the surface tension; repulsion is exothermic This add an entropic potential; endothermic, or an enhanced ability to express the 2nd law; protein catalysis.
The entire cell is catalytic, due to the water-oil effect, due to water leading. Life is like the second law, being expressed in a large 3-D coordinated way, mediated by the water. Every protein and enzyme is doing the same water dance, differing only by the type of oil; amino acid sequence, water will pack away.
Water is unique in that it can form up to four hydrogen bonds per water molecule. While each hydrogen bonds is like little binary switches that can shift between polar and covalent settings, without breaking the bond. It is the perfect matrix for moving 3-D information. The water is not just in contact with organics but also other water; bridge between all parts and the whole; 3-D water matrix of binary switches.
Hydrogen bonds are also unique in that their binary switch nature, splits the electromagnetic force into polar and magnetic components. Polar is about charge; electrostatic, while covalent is about opposite spin electron in shared orbitals; magnetic attraction is stronger than charge repulsion. The information matrix is very complex blending of signals that also has muscle.
