Long Burn

The Four Forces

I thought it was really fun to hear from Dave Bickford that there are four fundamental forces in biology:

migration, mutation, selection, drift

a nice parallel to physics, where there are four particles:

photon, boson, gluon, graviton

that mediate the four forces:

electromagnetism, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, gravitation

I started looking for other groupings of four forces. It turns out that there are four forces that govern aeronautics:

lift, drag, thrust, weight

And of course, in the ancient world, there were four elements:

air, water, fire, earth

If you have small children at home, there are also four forces guiding your life:

sleep, food, diapers, teeth

posted by Matt_J @ 4:58 PM