Theoretical biology
- For a compendium of perspectives on the province of theoretical biology, click this article's accompanying tab, 'Addendum', or click Theoretical biology/Addendum, which serves as a continuation of the Main Article.
Theoretical biology applies the tools of reason toward the goal of explaining the biological world, and its manifold aspects, through the development of ideas as models, hypotheses and eventually theories. It thereby distinguishes itself from observational and experimental biology, though without those empirical disciplines, theoretical biologists would have neither inspiration nor information with which to produce their constructs, or to evaluate them. Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's theory of evolution by means of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, aptly illustrates the co-dependence of information and reason in producing biological theory.
Scope of theoretical biology
If one narrowly defines theoretical biology as the application of the tools of reason in the practice of the science of living systems, then every biologist qualifies as a theoretical biologist. No biologist abandons reason in pursuit of their goals. Some biologists, however, drive themselves to apply the tools of reason to generate ideas about living systems as their major goal, and consequently find themselves identified as theoreticians. Theoretical biologists aim not to produce observational data or experimental results, but to produce ideas that attempt to explain observational or experimental data, or that attempt to predict novel observational or experimental data as consequences of their ideas. Their ideas may take the form of a hypothetical construct to account for some natural phenomenon in living systems, more elaborate models, or syntheses of diverse phenomena into revolutionary concepts or theories that have insightful and powerful explanatory and predictive power. The level of formalism may range from the narrative to the mathematical, depending on the nature of the question and the tools of reason employed.
Theoretical biologists emerge in every distinguishable discipline of the science of living systems, and branch into philosophy, sociology, economics, and public policy....