Now We Can Have Both

  

The Mathematics of Life
By Ian Stewart

   

   Through the early years of my life, I defined biology simply as observation and experimentation. Where teachers would just ask what you had seen and what have you observed. You know, stuffs like going outdoors to explore the beauty of nature or taking up weird dissections to appreciate bloodied bodies? Yeah that sounds gross, but seriously, biology is a way, way farther than mathematics. I can’t imagine myself taking up the Pythagorean Theorem to test if Mt. Mayon really a perfect cone. 

               

     Biology is simply for students who want to escape all the formulas and calculations. So, if you want to break through mathematics then have yourself runaway with biology. I know physics and chemistry are one of math’s lovers, so then biology would be a greater offer (Obviously, it’s the best we can get!). But then as the world evolved and developed through time, descriptive analysis and gathering facts are not enough to make biology work. So then the tables have been turned and today mathematics and biology wound up in pairs.

    Ever since I was born, biology has really been my favorite (No offense, but we do a great team!). That’s why after reading Ian Stewart’s Mathematics of Life; I can’t help thinking both worlds. For a moment both worlds are true, and you cannot quite tell them apart. There is Biology. And there is Mathematics. The two bleed into each other, and I am put into the middle. (Sucks)

   Though there are a lot of relations between biology and mathematics as what other philosophers had said, most of us students or even many biologists and mathematicians are unaware of these relationships. Ian Stewart proved this to be true. In fact he pointed out the premise that mathematics is the sixth revolution to influence biology following the sequence of microscope, classification, evolution, genetics and DNA’s structure. The first part of the book tackled commonly the history of each of these revolutions and its impact towards biology. (Honestly, this is a math book, but as what I can see the book is awkwardly filled to be biology) Anyways, the remainder of the book surpassed your expectation to be an easy-to-read portion, for it stands the vignettes about the interaction between biology and mathematics. Nevertheless, the scope of material exposed made me fascinated to tidbits such as dealing with patterns on fishes, hallucinations, evolutionary niches, and stripes on tigers or even the Fibonacci sequence. After all, nature alike math, followed patterns.  

    Literally, the basic postulate of this book is that there is a lot of mathematics that is applicable in some life sciences such as biology and can be understood by people even with a limited background or no interest towards mathematics, provided it is presented at an appropriate level and connected to biological ideas. Amazing huh? Of course no book on mathematics for the life sciences can be complete. For an author who’ve tried to be a layman and discussed biology using some applications in mathematics, that would be something. However, let us not forget that bringing up this kind of discourse required a deeper explanation and a denser approach.

   Looking forward many years from now, I can say biology will be much, much complicated as what is today yet extremely useful to the world we live in. Biology will remain just a house built with facts as well as mathematics without further assistance from each other. Metaphorically speaking, the muscles of mathematics are connected to the bones of biology by the tendons of mathematical modelling (Ledder, 2013). See? Now, all sciences got teamed up with mathematics. Great.

   Before I end, I just want to clarify that I’m not that mad towards the idea of math-biology-teaming-up-like-lovebirds scenario (uhm, maybe a little… no just a bit). But then, I’m also pleased that this combo made such a huge impact to our technology and for the improvement of many, many things. In general, this book enlightened me for the possibility of appreciating biology more through the help of math. I can simply say that this is a recommendable one especially those who wanted to view biology in a different perspective. Now, mathematics is the backbone for finding biology.