Maupertuis’s Principle (of Least Action) is not quite the same as Darwin’s Principle of Random Variation and Selective Retention (i.e., automatic design based on the post hoc adaptive advantages — for survival and reproduction — of natural developmental or random variations). But the two would be ominously close if it weren’t for the (subsequent) discovery of evolution’s mechanism: Mendelian genetics and eventually the DNA double helix.
That said, there nevertheless is a big difference between Biology and Physics: Physics is studying the basic laws of the universe, whereas Biology is mostly very local reverse-engineering: Figuring out how (naturally designed and selected, via DNA variation/retention) devices (organs, organisms, biological systems) work, by reverse-engineering them. This is exactly the same as forward engineering, which applies the laws of physics and the principles of engineering in order to design and build systems useful to Man: Biology simply takes already built ones and tries to figure out what lows of physics and principles of engineering underlie them and make them work.
In contrast, Physics is not, I think, usefully thought of as merely reverse-engineering designed systems (e.g., the universe or the atom). The laws of physics precede and underlie all the possible systems that can be designed and built by either engineers, or the Blind Watchmaker.
Stevan Harnad