> Biology is really just an emergent phenomenon after all.
Is that a settled question? I can see that the laws may be well defined, but what about the initial conditions? Can we determine the initial conditions precisely enough, assuming there are fundamental limits on what we can measure?
I guess that is equivalent to the question of whether if the initial conditions are approximately right, is there an in-built stability in the system, which makes a biological simulation converge to a to a meaningful result. Do errors get magnified or eliminated? (Presumably the latter, otherwise thermal noise would make us fall apart, but is this confirmed?)
As an aside, since you are in the molecular dynamics field, can you recommend a starting point for a novice that is interested in getting involved? Books? Open source software? I've always thought it would be fun to program an FPGA with the relevant equations, let it run, and see what happens.
Is that a settled question? I can see that the laws may be well defined, but what about the initial conditions? Can we determine the initial conditions precisely enough, assuming there are fundamental limits on what we can measure?
I guess that is equivalent to the question of whether if the initial conditions are approximately right, is there an in-built stability in the system, which makes a biological simulation converge to a to a meaningful result. Do errors get magnified or eliminated? (Presumably the latter, otherwise thermal noise would make us fall apart, but is this confirmed?)
As an aside, since you are in the molecular dynamics field, can you recommend a starting point for a novice that is interested in getting involved? Books? Open source software? I've always thought it would be fun to program an FPGA with the relevant equations, let it run, and see what happens.