TITLE: Can mathematics get from other sciences what it got from physics?
QUESTION [29 upvotes]: Throughout history, physics has been an unparalleled source of '' inspiration'' for discovering/inventing mathematical ideas, which is due to its ability to describe the physical world. But can this connection be made as profoundly with other fields of science like biology? Can other fields deepen our understanding of mathematics and generate new discoveries/inventions in it? Has this already happened? How so?

REPLY [4 votes]: Yes! This might apply to more of computer science and algorithms but look at genetic algorithm which comes straight from Biology. It is a heuristic that mimics the process of natural selection to arrive at an optimal solution or configuration. Basically we define a metric and then generate random solutions and keep the ones that score high on our metric. Then we breed them while also generating random samples. More information here.