>In the US, the typical response to theoretical biology is summed up in a
>phrase from my interview with Fran Ganong, then president of the
>American Physiological Society, when I was a graduate student regaling
>him with the wonders of physiological modeling. He pushed back in his
>chair and said, "Physiology is an experimental science and mathematics
>has no place in it."
*Physiological* modeling, if not MCA, is alive and well in toxicology
in the US, where biologists and theoreticians have been forced together
by the dictates of our benevolent govt. and the US EPA.
While it is necessary for the theoretician to learn the language of
biology to work with biologists, it is not necessary to be a bench
biologist. I have had only one college-level course in biology
(evolution), but some of my best friends are biologists. ;-)
-Paul
