Science without Validation in a World without Meaning
I work in molecular biology research, and I think this is a great article that strikes at the heart of many problems in the field. I can&#x27;t comment on the climate change stuff, although I wish he hadn&#x27;t included it because it was almost certain to distract people from the overall point.<p>The problem is that there are no remotely comprehensive, predictive, and mathematical models of what goes on inside of cells. It is pure empiricism: you run an intervention, and see what happens. Write it up in a paper.<p>All well and good, except there are no viable models of what is happening inside that are <i>predictive</i> in the sense of being able to know what an intervention will do until you test it. We really need that if we want to develop treatments for molecular diseases that are more than marginally better.<p>The Santa Fe Institute, systems biology people, and others were working hard on this problem at the turn of the century, but progress has stalled. It&#x27;s too hard. We don&#x27;t know how to do it. A new &quot;mathematical epistemology&quot; that could handle this problem would be a huge step forward, if it is possible.<p>I can see why the author would extend this idea to things like economics or climate science. The thought in systems research was that, perhaps, different fields share similar underlying &quot;complex systems&quot; mechanisms, and if we can solve the problem in one area, we may have insights for how to do it elsewhere.