RobB

I heard an interesting podcast with Iain McGilchrist a couple of months ago. Amongst many other things he observed that biological, and particularly medical, sciences were still stuck in a particular way of thinking and modelling that likened biological processes/interactions to machines. A point he made was that there has never been a machine on this planet that wasn't built by ourselves ('Ancient Aliens' aside) - modelling biology as machinery is reductive and a way for humans to start to grasp the complexity of the situation rather than saying anything about the actual nature of the organisms in question. He also pointed out that physics has understood the equivalence of energy and matter for over a century and none (very little?) of that thinking has crossed over into mainstream bioscience yet. I work with scientists all the time. They're people just like all of us, making their way in the world. A lot of them are lovely, some less so. They all have bills to pay and many have families to feed. I'm fortunate to be in an academic environment. Once commercial pressures get applied people might behave differently. I'm not sure that's unique to scientists though.