Mathematical biophysics

Among them are the genetic code, the chemiosmotic theory, and the clonal selection theory of adaptive immunity.

Some of these theories emerged untethered to experimental evidence and yet proved correct, while others were developed in a tighter feedback loop with experimental work.

Still, theoretical biology doesn't seem to have attained the same standing and institutional support that is granted to theoretical physics or, for that matter, other fields that study complex systems, such as economics.

I've long wondered why this is.

Some of the earliest theories in biology persisted for centuries until they were refuted or subsumed into more modern theories.

For one, the theory of spontaneous generation posited the emergence of living things like fleas, maggots, and frogs out of non-living matter like mud or decaying meat.

It was first fully articulated by Aristotle in his History of Animals and was based on the works of earlier Greek natural philosophers.

The long debates over spontaneous generation were finally resolved by the simple but ingenious experiments of Louis Pasteur in the early eighteen sixties that decisively ruled out this theory.