I have a copy of Murray's book, and I'm also sitting in on
his class when I get the chance - he teaches the class directly
from the book. He's a very nice man and extremely nimble with
his mathematics.
But as he himself admits, he doesn't know boo about biology.
There's been an awful lot of completely useless (e.g. most
issues of Theoretical Population Biology) and even downright
wrong (e.g. May's 1973 book) work that purports to be biology
but is merely mathematics. I mean, NOBODY believes that the
Lotka-Volterra equations have any relevance to the real world,
and yet, nearly every issue of TPB has some paper with some
new fillip on the same old stuff. Why bother? The shoe can
also be placed on the other foot, you see: why are mathematicians
so poorly grounded in biology?
Certainly, the intersection of two fields often proves to be
fertile intellectual ground. But at the same time, an awful lot
of hogwash or even more fertile substances is produced at the
same time.
I work at the "Center for Quantitative Sciences in Fisheries,
Forestry, and Wildlife" here at the UW, and while there is often
a tendency to lose sight of the biological relevance of the
mathematics and statistics we teach here, I believe it is important
to avoid developing "math envy". Biological processes are not
inherently tractable to mathematical approaches. Some are, in
obvious ways. Some are, in less obvious ways. Some may be but
in completely opaque ways. And some may be intractable.
What qualifies as "interesting work" for one person is a yawner
to another. It may not have been the previous poster's intent
to insult biologists, but he did a darn good job of it. Many
of us are adequate mathematicians who see no compelling reason
to dust off the ol' linear algebra to deal with our field of
interest.
But you're right, Murray's book IS very fine, if a bit dear.
Cheers,
Dr. Josh Hayes, Center for Quantitative Sciences, HR-20
University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195 USA
josh at mowgli.cqs.washington.edu
Don't get the idea that I speak for CQS or UW. I don't. So THERE.
--
Domain: curtiss at umiacs.umd.edu Phillip Curtiss
UUCP: uunet!mimsy!curtiss UMIACS - Univ. of Maryland
Phone: +1-301-405-6710 College Park, Md 20742
