But oftentimes theoretical chemistry is not as important as what we get out of experiments because unlike physics, which attempts to derive general laws of nature, chemistry has to deal with the nitty gritty of the diversity of actual miscroscopic interactions of things. Any theory that is not entirely rigorous or even has slight room for an exception will be ignored by necessity, and physics is chock full of such examples. Biology is in a certain sense better (since it deals with larger things) and in a certain sense worse (as it relies on dogma and mysticism, at its essence, to explain the systems of life), and still nobody has gone beyond Aristotle and Kant in giving anything close to a rigorous definition of life as such.
how does biology depend on "dogma and mysticism"? I am really curious - a Google search yielded nothing much relevant.
> and still nobody has gone beyond Aristotle and Kant in giving anything close to a rigorous definition of life as such
You stopped reading after the 1800's? Schrödinger told us life is what feeds on negative entropy and that is pretty good.
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Where is physics chock full pf exceptions?