Metaphors for Biology: Sizes
19 days ago
- #metaphors
- #scale
- #biology
- Biology operates across vastly different scales, from atoms to ecosystems, making it hard to intuit.
- Metaphors help conceptualize biological agents but often oversimplify complex ideas by ignoring specifics like size and quantity.
- Quantitative metaphors, like comparing mitochondria to batteries in a toaster, provide better understanding by including size and scale.
- At the molecular level, sizes vary greatly; proteins are massive compared to water molecules, and mRNA is even larger.
- Scaling up water molecules to sand grains helps visualize biomolecules: proteins become blueberry-sized, DNA strands pencil-thick, and chromosomes span kilometers.
- Single-celled organisms range from ping-pong ball-sized viruses to cow-sized bacteria and city-block-sized eukaryotes.
- Human cells and organelles are complex: nuclei are hotel room-sized, mitochondria coral-like webs, and membranes thin porcelain tiles.
- Organs and body parts scale dramatically: hairs are soccer pitch-thick, aortas span cities, and brains cover half of Belgium.
- Animals vary from kilometer-long nematodes to humans tall enough to reach space stations.
- Manmade objects like pennies become kilometer-tall disks, and iPhone processors span 10 kilometers.
- The sand-as-water-molecule metaphor loses usefulness at human scales, where distances become astronomical.
- Future essays will explore biological time metaphors.