格致

自然杂志上一个小随笔：A clash of two cultures。这里的两种 cultures 指的是物理和生物学术圈的文化。从我上大学时就听人讲，学物理的与学生物的思维方式有多大区别，看来直到现在依旧是个话题。如文中所述，这种区别已经存在至少一个世纪。

In the past, biologists have been little concerned about whether their findings might achieve the status of a law. And even when findings seem to be so general as to warrant thinking of them as a law, the discovery of limits to their generality has not been seen as a problem. Think, for example, of Mendel's laws, the central dogma or even the 'law' of natural selection. Exceptions to these presumed laws are no cause for alarm; nor do they send biologists back to the drawing board in search of better, exception-free laws. They are simply reminders of how complex biology is in reality.

Physical scientists, however, come from a different tradition — one in which the search for universal laws has taken high priority. Indeed, the success of physics has led many to conclude that such laws are the sine qua non of a proper science, and provide the meaning of what a 'fundamental explanation' is.