Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!bionet!net.bio.net!kristoff
From: kristoff@NET.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.bio-matrix
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <CMM.0.88.612821641.kristoff@NET.BIO.NET>
Date: 2 Jun 89 20:14:01 GMT
Sender: kristoff@NET.BIO.NET
Lines: 24

Toni,

	You make many excellent points in your message in regards to
first principles vs reasoning by analogy, attitudes of some physicists
towrads biology, etc.  (I should note though that just as some
physicists simplify calculations using models that are biologically
unreasonable, some biologists use these examples as proof that ALL
attempts to do quantitative work are suspect.  One must avoid both
extremes.)  I do want to offer a different view of your following
section though.

> 4.  The notion of hypertext applied to electronic publishing is
> interesting, but I can envision it rapidly becoming first, a Talmudic
> extravaganza as people dump their immediate (not necessarily best) thoughts
> on line, and slowly an unread resource as everyone gets tired of
> wading through the commentary.  

This would be true if the system allowed write access by everyone.
On-line text does not preclude editing prior to posting.  I would
think that hypertext would allow the correlation of scholarly articles
of related interest.  It needn't necessarily become a patchwork quilt
built upon the first submission.

Dave Kristofferson