Point: Hypotheses first

摘要

During the twentieth century, biology - traditionally a descriptive science - became one of hypothesis-driven experimentation. Tightly coupled with this was the increasing dominance of reductionism, the idea that complex biological systems can be understood by dismantling them into their constituent pieces and studying each in isolation. Implicit here was the notion that observations should only be made to support or attack hypothesized mechanisms of action, and that simple observation - phenomenology for its own sake - is of relatively little use.