crossover

Natural Philosophy, covering all the natural sciences, separated into chemistry + physics + biology; chemistry into organic and inorganic, analytic and electro chemistry, etc. Areas of specialization like physical chemistry, chemical physics (which is different), astro physics, geophysics, etc. have only recently begun to assume prominence.

So far there has been relatively little recondensation of major areas because within our lifetime science as a whole has been expanding almost exponentially.

There has been mainly splintering, subdivision, and specialization. Knowing the habits of exponentials with fifteen year time constants, you must realize that this process cannot continue very long. Some sciences must die and some must recombine. To date biochemistry is the biggest single area of recombination unless we admit that applied and theoretical physics are once again exchanging subject matter.

Now it is time to ask when we come to biophysics and what it is. Biophysics is not so much subject matter as it is a point of view. It is an approach to problems of biological science utilizing the theory and technology of the physical science. Conversely, biophysics is also a biologist's approach to problems of physical science and engineering although this aspect has largely been neglected.

Biochemistry, the sister science to biophysics, was the first major example of a reconvergence of science after a few decade sojourn apart. As the science that uses chemical thinking in biological science and possibly a little of the inverse process, it began to grow to prominence in Liebig's time around the middle of last century and is now well established. It has departments in every major school, it has its societies, its financial supports, and its record of achievement.

Biophysics is just starting to blossom even though its growth started some years ago. We must expect it to expand much as biochemistry did, but I suspect it has even a larger destiny.

Three centuries ago there were biophysicists at work but they didn't know that their field of experimentation would later be dignified by a special name. Stephen Hales, who lived from 1679 to 1761, performed the experiment of tying down a horse, attaching a long manometer of brass and glass tube to its blood vessels using a goose windpipe as flexible tubing, and then measuring the height of the blood column as he drained one pint of blood after another out of the horse. http://www.otto-schmitt.org/OttoPagesFinalForm/Sounds/Speeches/BiophysicsEmerges.htm