An argument

it started with my debate with my housemate with regard to whether biology is fundamentally different from the physical sciences. i essentially believe that the discrimination against biology as an "arsty" science or a lesser science is unjust because biology usese the same data collection and logical deduction process as the rest of the sciences, and also involves great extent of reproducibility. the reason why many people dissmiss the equal scientificity of biology is just that they cannot understand that the difference in extent/degree of complexity does not mean the difference in nature. biology as the investigation of the living system, necessarily studies a more complex object and being a young subject, necessarily has fewer tools to use. the overwhelming information that flux out of experiments all too easily lead people to believe that this science does not run on logic, but tends to be more of a descriptive and arbitary science. e.g. logical processes such as prooving cannot be used. in fact, this should be attributed to our limited understanding of the subject. just step back and look at the bigger picture, since biological systems comprise of physical substances, there should not be any difference between the principles that an organism operates and a clock, apart from that the organism is more complex. and anyway physics and chemistry started as observatory sciences and developed into quantitative and deductive phases that we now see them in. (think alchemy.) so my conclusion is that biology is essentially no difference from the other sciences.

that said, i was myself lead into a new contemplation. how about social sciences? we routinely look at social sciences as fundamentally different from the natural sciences, and, are the "lesser" sciences. but if we follow my logic in the preceeding passage, we would be compelled to acknowledge that they can be real sciences. see, we are talking about material systems such as a human society. with my presumption that there is no God or other supernatural power, our society is no less physical than an e field, all composed of atoms anyway. so when our understanding of the human unit become substancial, there is actually potential for real scientific investigation by the laws of physics on the society, a collection of humans, which are collections of physical atoms.