Explaining Life with Mathematics

‘Mathematics is Life’ by Ian Stewart is an interesting educational book because it has a different approach in instilling knowledge. It starts in its first chapter by giving a recap of some of what was learned in our high school biology. This makes it easier for a reader who is not majoring in Biology nor has been listening to his/her high school teacher. He used topics that are in context with his book and for him these are the revolutions in Biology. The topics are (i) the microscope; (ii) classification; (iii) evolution; (iv) genetics, and (v) the structure of DNA. There is a sixth revolution for Stewart and for him it is on its way. The new revolution in Biology is in collaboration with mathematics or the collision of this two fields—biomathematics. The application of mathematics to biology would make conclusions on observations not only based on the five senses but also through mathematical means.

There is a wide scope in the pairing of mathematics to biology. In order to make it short, the author summarized the few key research areas over the course of the nineteen chapters. The chapters contained knowledge that a biology student would know making it fun to read because I was able to comprehend it all. However, my head started to hurt as the topic goes to the application of mathematics to biology.

Chapter 1- Mathematics and Biology- tackled the five revolutions that changed the way scientists think about life. 300 years ago, (1) the microscope enabled us to see the complexity of life on the smaller scales. The (2) system of classification by Carl Linnaeus on 1735 organized almost all organisms. Charles Darwin’s concept of (3) evolution proposed a new vision of the source of life’s diversity. Charles Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species had no equations but it does not mean mathematics has no role to play in the science of life.  The fourth revolution is Gregor Mendel’s  discovery of the genes  which formed (4) genetics. Francis Crick and James Watson’s (5) structure of DNA allowed scientists know the physical nature of the gene.

Chapter 2- Creatures Smaller and Smaller- summarized the discovery of small scale organisms. These opened up the vast reaches of cosmos and the intricate small-scale world living creatures.

Chapter 3- Long List of Life- showed how organisms were organized and how taxonomists recognized 300,000 species of plants, 30,000 fungi and other non-animals, and 1.25 million animals.

My favorite chapter in the book is chapter 4—Florally Finding Fibonacci wherein there is a collection of comments about modelling. This chapter makes a distinction between descriptive and explanatory models. It connected the models with the phyllotaxis--the arrangement of plant organs such as leaves, petals, branches, bracts, scales, and florets. These connections created a mathematical pattern in nature which is now the golden ratio, golden angle and the Fibonacci sequence.

Chapter 5- The Origin of Species- showed how Darwin, Lamarck and other great scientists proved that there is such thing as evolution and natural selection.

Chapter 6 to 19 is basically the same thing. He just elaborated and expanded each of the five revolutions to know how mathematics would be applied to it. I would like though to emphasize chapter 14- Lizard Games- because it highlighted some important work on models of speciation.

  The importance of mathematics to biology is greatly emphasized in the book. An example would be how the spirals in the head of a sunflower grow at an exact rotation of a specific degree of angle. For me, however, these are obvious observations but the accurateness of the angle made it interesting. Here is where mathematics comes in.  It makes the observations more reliable because there is a mathematical basis for it.

To be honest I was amazed by the simplicity of the book and how the writer made it easier to understand. He gave analogies to make the systems that mathematics are working to explain understandable. He even had well-chosen illustrations so that the reader would be able to imagine in their head the biological background. However, he had a problem connecting the two disciplines. That’s why I can’t fathom some chapters.

“Science is seldom about direct observation: it is nearly always about indirect reference.” I like this quote from the author. The beauty of Science is that observations could easily be obtained but that doesn’t prove that it’s correct. After a series of the same observation, a pattern is formed. The true meaning of or the essence of a certain observed phenomenon has a deeper approximate explanation using mathematical models and would be the basis for future reference.  This collaboration would give more meaning to life as we know it.

As a future biologist, I appreciated the book even though I had a hard time reading it. This is honestly because I don’t read that much. The book Mathematics of life is dense with information. Stewart said that the biological system is very complex giving a bigger interest in mathematical analysis. Mathematics will give structure to Biology. With this, mathematicians are starting to love Biology. It’s about time we should appreciate theirs too. For Stewart, the next revolution is explaining life with mathematics.