For centuries, naturalists have answered questions about the living world by logging lots of data: miles of flaming-red leaves, mammal brains over millions of years, gigabytes moving from genome to genome. But theories in many parts of biology lag far behind all that data. That’s a challenge for science.
“If you don’t make context and assumptions explicit, you could flail around trying to figure out what the problem is,” says Samuel Scheiner, a U.S. federal government researcher. “Articulating the theories, the assumptions behind them, and how individual models connect makes people’s science more efficient and effective.”
Take individual variation, something we see daily. Your sister-in-law, let’s say, could not be more different from your boss, from hair color to temperament to taste in tacos. But many ecological models treat individuals within a species as identical, says Scheiner. When models do consider variability, some make very different predictions. Knowing theoretical assumptions in advance means you can fine tune a better match between your model and the real world.
Scheiner runs an ambitious project to develop an overarching theory for biology. He’s already tackled ecology and evolution. Now Scheiner has co-organized a workshop on “The Theory of Genetics: Articulating and Formalizing Theories of Biological Information” this October 7–9 at SFI, another step in “doing for the rest of biology what Darwin did for evolution.”
“Genetics is a core element of biology, across all disciplines. Our workshop assembles genetics practitioners — like developmental, cell, and organismal biologists — plus philosophers of science and theorists of games, information, and evolution,” says SFI External Professor Mary O’Connor (University of British Columbia), an ecologist and co-organizer with Scheiner and with Charbel El-Hani, a philosopher at Universidade Federal da Bahia.
Pinpointing assumptions in genetics requires mapping the complex flow of information within an organism, between an organism and its world, and across time over generations. “At the workshop, we will identify some gaps in complexity science in this particular area of heritability and information,” says O’Connor. Participants will discuss whether genetics needs a new theory, or if existing theories suffice when unified.
“Genetics is not very theory-rich,” says Scheiner. So participants will quite literally be writing the book — with a manuscript on genetic theory in the works. “I’m not sure what the chapters will be about. They’re going to emerge from the workshop,” Scheiner says. “The theories themselves are not what’s most important. It’s trying to get biologists to think differently — to always integrate what they do into a larger vision.”
This workshop was supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative-Understanding Dynamic and Multi-scale Systems-Collaborative Award (https://doi.org/10.37717/220020491).