[AThirdThing] A Fourth Thing

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/65746858

Read ages ago that at MIT or wherever they taught rocket science they would say “it’s just rocket science, it’s not music theory.” No clue if that’s actually true tho

I always thought things like music theory and biology were harder because it’s often words and classifications given to things before they were codified and then when you learn the actual theory it’s like “well, this thing is named identically to that other piece of theory over there because we used to think they were the exact same but actually they couldn’t be more different”. Chemistry can be similar but has a much more rigid structure than music theory and biology.

Physics at least tends to start with math and connects to theory later.

Genetics is especially bad, since newly-discovered genes are named based on their function, while genes that were discovered in the early days of genetics research are instead named based on what happens to the body when they don’t work, since we didn’t know enough about biology back then to determine what their exact function was. This leads to situations like how one of the prominent genes featured in eye development is called “Retina and Anterior Neural Fold Homeobox,” and another is called “Eyeless.”