Abstract

I argue that seven methodological principles that have been regarded as paradigmatic of good research in the physical sciences, simplicity, generality, idealization, conservatism, experimentation, mathematics, and mechanism, often do not produce good results in biology. It is possible to do good biological research without strictly adhering to these principles, and attempts to apply these principles can produce poor results. Thus, biology's methodology does conform to the standard views of methodology in the physical sciences, because its methodology is successful, even though it is unlike the methodology of the physical sciences, and biology is an autonomous science in that it should not be subjugated to the methodological rule of the physical sciences