Why We Do It, by Niles Eldredge

No, this isn't a book review. I picked up this book at the airport yesterday and made it through a good bit before I succumbed to sleep on the plane. This quote, from a section titled "Physics Envy," stuck in my head:

And later evolutionary biologists, such as Earnst Mayr, have occasionally wondered aloud why physicists can't seem to grasp the concept of natural selection. Inasmuch as physicists are not a uniformly stupid lot, that many of them don't seem to "get" core evolutionary concepts like natural selection is actually very interesting.

I have to say that as a physicist, and hopefully not a stupid one, I have never, my whole life, had trouble understanding natural selection. I don't imagine that most of the other physicists I know would have trouble with the concept, although I have not actually discussed it with them. One wonders of whom the author is speaking. Perhaps he thinks physicists can only understand things as equations? I've run in to that attitude before. Maybe I know an unusually broad-minded group of physicists.

In any event, the following sentence stands as an intriguing challenge: "A true physics of genetic information remains to be developed." I'm not quite sure what he means by that yet. He alludes to "some interesting early attempts" but doesn't give specifics.