Andrew Krause

@blindmath.bsky.social

569 Followers 1050 Following

Chronically-Ill Nearsighted Mathematician and Amateur Human. Co-creator of VisualPDE.com (irony!) (he/him) https://www.andrewkrause.org

Text which says: "It is rather ironic, then, that Bird (2013) claims that ‘in biology, ideas are relatively cheap’. I would suggest that rather, in biology (especially molecular biology and neuroscience) ideas are rather rare. It is data that are, if not cheap, then abundant to the point of excess, and it is possible to make a career collecting data that one is never obliged to interpret. It is rather in physics that ideas tend to come cheaply and almost casually, especially when data are scarce – witness the flood of theoretical papers always submitted to the physics preprint servers to ‘explain’ some new, tentative anomaly in high-energy physics that turns out to evaporate on closer inspection."
The beginning of an email which reads: "Hello Andrew, I just wanted to give you an update a week after our meeting. I have gone to the national library in the city to acquire and lend the books you suggested, they didn’t have the ones on PDEs, so I will have to go to a library further out to get those. However, I’ve now started on Steven Strogatz’s unputdownable “Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos” which, funnily enough, I found more compelling than many non-academic books."
Text which says: " You said: Uploaded image Can you transcribe the two paragraphs here into text I can copy and paste? ChatGPT said: Here is a clean transcription of the two paragraphs: Unlike the theory, models are restricted by technical considerations to a few components at a time, even in systems which are complex. Thus a satisfactory theory is usually a cluster of models. These models are related to each other in several ways: as coordinate alternative models for the same set of phenomena, they jointly produce robust theorems; as complementary models they can cope with different aspects of the same problem and give complementary as well as overlapping results; as hierarchically arranged “nested” models, each provides an interpretation of the sufficient parameters of the next higher level where they are taken as given. In Figure 3 we show schematically the relations among some of the models in the theory of community structure. The multiplicity of models is imposed by the contradictory demands of a complex, heterogeneous nature and a mind that can only cope with few variables at a time; by the contradictory desiderata of generality, realism, and precision; by the need to understand and also to control; even by the opposing esthetic standards which emphasize the stark simplicity and power of a general theorem as against the richness and the diversity of living nature. These conflicts are irreconcilable. Therefore, the alternative approaches even of contending schools are part of a larger mixed strategy. But the conflict is about method, not nature, for the individual models, while they are essential for understanding reality, should not be confused with that reality itself."
A poster for the symposium described in the post. It lists the dates of 8-11 of September. It has a photo of the Durham castle, and a list of the invited speakers (which is also on the website linked in the post). It also has the application deadline of March 31st. The ICMS logo and Durham University logos are both displayed at the bottom.
A photo of text which reads: It is rather ironic, then, that Bird (2013) claims that 'in biology, ideas are relatively cheap'. I would suggest that rather, in biology (especially molecular biology and neuroscience) ideas are rather rare. It is data that are, if not cheap, then abundant to the point of excess, and it is possible to make a career collecting data that one is never obliged to interpret. It is rather in physics that ideas tend to come cheaply and almost casually, especially when data are scarce - witness the flood of theoretical papers always submitted to the physics preprint servers to 'explain' some new, tentative anomaly in high-energy physics that turns out to evaporate on closer inspection.
A quote which reads: 1. A model of the embryo: Morphogens In this section a mathematical model of the growing embryo will be described. This model will be a simplification and an idealization, and consequently a falsification. It is to be hoped that the features retained for discussion are those of greatest importance in the present state of knowledge.
An aerial photo of the centre of Durham city on a snowy winter day. A river encircles the centre containing Durham's Castle and Cathedral. Photo courtesy of RJX Media.
A photo of several crocheted creatures surrounding the textbook "Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers: Asymptotic Methods and Perturbation Theory." The crocheted creatures include a red and gray squirrel, a mimic chest, a beholder, and a munchkin kitten in a munchkin pumpkin.