“Kaya nga ako nag
Microbio dahil ayaw ko ng math pero may math pa rin pala dito no?” I remembered
this phrase from one of the coolest prof here in college while I was skimming
over the book entitled “The Mathematics of Life” by Ian Stewart. At first that
statement was able to make me laugh thinking that Microbiology and Mathematics
are two different disciplines and if you don’t really like math then one can
choose a course somewhere along the field of biology. But as I go over the book,
I began to think that somehow that statement really had sense.
The first few
chapters of this book were an easy read for me. Being a student under the BSFT
program we had our share of biology lessons all over the course prospectus, be
it a major or just a GE class, so more or less I already had a background on
concepts like microscopy, evolution, genetics, DNA, and taxonomy of species. By
reading these chapters I was able to refresh the things I learned from my 12
years of education. What I liked about the book is the way how Stewart carried
the audience to his argument that mathematics is a revolution for the life
sciences.
First he introduced biological concepts to give his readers a brief
but detailed background on the biological concepts that he used on the later
part of the book. I was amazed by the fact that he was able to squeeze all
those information in like 50 pages or less and such information was very
comparable to authors like Campbell (though the latter is a better author since
he is a biologist) in the sense that one could easily understand the concepts
presented. Another thing that amazed me is the fact that Stewart is a mathematician
yet he can write about something easy to comprehend outside his field of
expertise unlike many authors. He was able to present examples which made the
book easy to understand
After introducing
the biological concepts, Stewart started to reveal proofs that Mathematics was
a part of the life sciences by connecting these biological concepts with the
mathematical ones. He provided examples that show how these two seemingly
different disciplines are intertwined like the presence of Fibonacci in the
pattern of flowers, number theory in Mendel’s genetic concept, geometry in the
shape of viruses and many other examples found in the book. These examples were
able to make me realize that indeed mathematics is a tool used to better
understand such concepts. It’s like mathematics has a unique way of simplifying
things thus making sense of all data gathered in a biological experiment. As a result many mathematicians are now coming
up with different equations that would suit a particular method in a biological
inquiry.
Overall this book
is a really good one especially because Stewart really took the time to try and
simplify things so that everything is understandable. He also took the time to
research on many examples to further support his argument which really made the
book lively and educating. Further he was able to narrate the history of some
of the biological concepts presented in the book which I think is not really
necessary but I got his point that we should give credits to these bored people
who discovered such wonders of the life sciences. Though I myself am not
convinced that Mathematics is a revolution in the life sciences at least I was
able to appreciate how Mathematics and Biology had this relationship that
enabled humanity to advance further, a relationship that is beneficial to both
disciplines since everyday new ideas are discovered and for these to be
understood Mathematics will always “hold hand” with Biology.
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