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An important factor must be that physical objects are dead, far less complex, all atoms of an isotope are identical, while biological 'objects' are literally unique individuals with a history. Considering these differences it makes no sense to demand universal, exceptionless laws in biology.
I fully agree with your "I think there are general principles that we simply haven't properly explored or articulated yet".
Indeed, fist we need to investigate the available 'laws', 'rules', 'principles', such as:
Rubner's Law; Bergmann's rule; Kleiber's law; Allometric scaling laws; Hutchinson's ratio, Rensch's rule; Constructal law and more...
and find out why they are not universal.
It seems to me that most promising are those 'laws' related to energy, metabolic rate, body size, temperature, food chains, ... in other words: physical properties.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant about McShea & Brandon's law.
It seems very difficult to come up with good laws in the realm of biology, or at least much more difficult that in other fields. The best examples we've come up with all seem overly simplistic or somehow irrelevant (eg, Hardy-Weinberg). To me, the biggest problem is that none of the suggestions I've come up with (or heard) feel particularly insightful or enlightening; I don't feel like they reflect or increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms.
I think there's value in considering the question of _why_ it's so hard to formulate laws of biology. I suspect it has to do with how biological phenomena emerge from chemical and physical processes, and the apparent freedom that results (or perhaps 'non-contingency' - there's a better, technical term that escapes me at the moment). Having said that, I think there are general principles that we simply haven't properly explored or articulated yet; for example, the 'equations of the brain' that Adam shared seem like good candidates for general principles of neurobiology. So I'm torn between 'biology is too contingent for laws' and 'our understanding of biology is too parochial'....
I agree. McShea & Brandon's Law has the inherent danger that it boils down to something uninteresting like: complexity increases unless it decreases.
According to (some or most?) philosophers of biology there are no exceptionless laws in biology. Elliott Sober (1993) Philosophy of biology.
The Hardy-Weinberg law seems to be an exceptionless natural law, but if I understand Sober correctly, these laws are exceptionless because they are essentially mathematical, not empirical laws.
All empirical biological laws seem to have exceptions, so are not real laws. There are regularities.
An evolutionary law related to McShea & Brandon is:
Dollo's law of irreversibility states that "An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors". (wikipedia)
I think, Dollo's law could be interpreted as the underpinning of McShea & Brandon's law.
However, Dollo's law is not an exceptionless law, becasue exceptions are proposed.
Maybe, Crick's Central Dogma (genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to protein) is a biological law. But reverse transcription appears to be an exception. The central dogma could be reformulated as: information never flows from proteins via RNA to DNA.
As far as I know there are no exceptions to that law.
I wasn't familiar with McShea & Brandon's book, so I'm glad you brought it to my attention. I'll have to read it when I get the chance.
Adam: That looks like an interesting paper. Thanks for sharing it!
http://papers.cnl-t.salk.edu/PDFs/Information%20Theory%20of%20Adaption%20in%20Neurons%2C%20Behavior%2C%20and%20Mood%202014-4187.pdf
I think a lot of it will be identifying the 'boundary constraints' before we can figure out what the unifying principles are; that will be the (or, a) hard part
What do you think about this law:
"In any evolutionary system in which there is variation and heredity, there is a tendency for diversity and complexity to increase, one that is always present but may be opposed or augmented by natural selection, other forces, or constraints acting on diversity and complexity."
It looks like an elaboration of your second law, but actually it is from:
Daniel W. McShea, Robert Brandon (2010) "Biology's First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems", University Of Chicago Press.
Gert Korthof
http://neuroecology.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/monday-open-thread-are-these-the-equations-of-the-brain/
For instance, we can describe neural firing almost exactly using the Hodgkin-Huxley equations. We can also describe how sensory neurons respond to the world by determining how they would maximize their information about the world.