Why I am not a Biologist

I diligently avoided biology throughout my high school and college years. Why? Well, for starters biology is the smelly science. Also wet, sticky, and generally disturbing. Contrast that with the clean, crystalline clarity of physics. But I've also come to understand that there's a fundamental difference between the way that biologists and physicists think about the world. Maybe you've seen this famous poster of "metabolic pathways":

I have to admit that the first time I encountered it in the hallway of my university, I thought it was some sort of a joke. What kind of Rube Goldberg machine is this anyway? Of course, it's very real, but my reaction shows the gulf between the way that physicists and biologists think.

Physicists always seek out the simplest explanations. Their theories can be quite complex, and whole books are written about classical mechanics or general relativity. But these theories are, at their base, very simple -- based on just a few key ideas. And new theories in physics are evaluated on their simplicity -- the more bells and whistles and knobs and gears in a new theory, the less credible it will be. Biological systems, in contrast, are extremely complex, and biologists revel in their complexity. Hence the poster above. So that's the real reason I am not a biologist. Plus I hate the smell of preservatives.