Talk:Biological mathematics

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Revision as of 10:47, 4 August 2011 by imported>John R. Brews (→‎Biological mathematics is a misnomer: added comment)
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Biological mathematics is a misnomer

Mathematics has application to biology, and machines for computation based upon biology may exist, but to state that the "exploration and exploitation" of biological systems is itself mathematics is an error. Mathematics is a conceptual construct independent of its applications in principle, although of course, applications can stimulate mathematical creativity. John R. Brews 15:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

GH Hardy paraphrases Gauss: "if mathematics is the queen of the sciences, then the theory of numbers is, because of its extreme uselessness, the queen of mathematics" A Mathematician's Apology, p. 120 John R. Brews 16:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I have reworded this article to avoid using mathematics as a sub-discipline of biology on the basis that any application of mathematics to a physical system is established by the study of that system, and is not a branch of mathematics per se. Likewise, the performance of mathematical algorithms using an organism or a computer is not mathematics per se, although the formal devising of the algorithm is such. John R. Brews 16:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)