Seeking Biology's Physics Stories: Simplify, Simplify

The American poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” I've sought stories in biophysics, mostly through theoretical modeling, often through simplified models. My colleagues and I brought polymer statistical physics to help solve the physical protein folding problem. In related questions of water physics, principles of nonequilibria, cell fitnesses, and the chemical origins of life, our work has been about entropies, driving forces, and nature's funneling of disorder to order. This is a story of my personal journey.