Some useful (and not so useful) WWW sites:
Chapter Related Web Sites from Life
Internet Travels in the Life Sciences
Scientific American
Science
Discover Magazine
New York Times
USA Today
CNN Interactive
Time
The Why Files
ION Science
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
Virtual Frog Dissection Kit
Newton's Apple
Popular Science Magazine
Access Excellence
Eureka!
MIT Biology Homepage
Tasty Insect Recipes

1. Define the term "Biology."

2. List and understand the combination of characteristics that distinguishes the living from the nonliving.

3. Outline and describe the logic behind the basic steps of the scientific method.

4. Explain what is meant by the phrase "science as a way of knowing."

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The study of the living world is complex and messy because of the infinite number of interactions that must be considered:

• within a cell
• among cells in an organ
• among the organ systems in an organism
• between organisms and the abiotic environment
• among individuals in a population
• between species

Knowing the facts of biology without an understanding of these relationships is insufficient to understand the biological world.

How do I know that you are living?

Life is defined in terms of qualities that the living uniquely share:

• Life is organized
  -in a sequence of increasing complexity (structures within structures)
  -the basic unit of life is the cell
  -levels of biological organization extend from within the individual organism to the biosphere

• Life requires energy
  -the natural tendency of matter is towards disorder (i.e., entropy or randomness)
  -living systems acquire and use energy to maintain their highly organized state
  -metabolism: the biochemical reactions that acquire and use energy

• Living things must maintain an internal constancy
  -living things must maintain their separation from the non-living world
  -for metabolic processes to function normally, living things need to keep themselves stable in temperature, moisture level, chemistry, etc.
  -homeostasis: the ability to maintain chemical constancy (i.e., to stay the same)
  

• Living things react to environmental change (an individual reacts to its environment)
  -behavior - move towards or away from stimuli
  -change in metabolism
  -change in development

• Living things grow, develop, and reproduce
  -vital if a population of organisms is to survive more than one generation
  -"Instructions" for growth and development are encoded in genes

• Living things adapt (evolutionary change over many generations)
  -an inherited characteristic or behavior that enables an organism to live and successfully reproduce in a given environment
  -life can adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions
  -these adaptations/modifications accumulate in a population of organisms when individuals with these traits are more likely to reproduce than others

The Why Files explains
NASA's Press Release
Time Magazine

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All living things share the same basic characteristics outlined above. This unity suggests that all living things are descendant from a common ancestor. Living things are diverse because of adaptation to various ways of life.

Science is a process for answering our questions about the natural world.

The scientific method of investigation involves making a series of inquiries by observing, questioning, reasoning, predicting, testing, interpreting, and concluding. However, because these inquiries often spawn new ideas and raise new questions, the scientific method is a cycle of inquiry, with the search for knowledge never ending.

• Make observations, ask questions, and consult prior knowledge

• After synthesizing this information, formulate a hypothesis
  -a tentative explanation of the observed facts (i.e., how the natural world works)

• Design an experiment or observation to test the hypothesis
  -a prediction can be made based on the hypothesis, and is often phrased as an "If........then....." statement
  -controlled experiments can be done in a laboratory or the "field"
  -experiments can be purely observational
  -experiments can be conducted using computer models

• Collect and interpret data

• Repeat above

• Draw conclusions
  -these conclusions either refute or support the hypothesis

• These conclusions and further observations spawn other questions, hypotheses, and experiments

Spontaneous generation
(Note: These links should be used in order to understand how the application of the scientific method refuted the theory of spontaneous generation.)

Chapter 2 Related Websites

The Scientific Method - Elegant Experiments
The Slow Death of Spontaneous Generation

For additional information:
Swan-neck (or S-shaped) flask illustration
A reenactment of "The Microbe Hunters"
The Life and Times of Louis Pasteur
Also see pages 352-353 and 371 in your textbook

A scientist believes that the natural world is a physical reality, but that we can only construct a conceptual view of that reality based upon observation and experimentation.

We may never truly know that reality.

Each of us has our own view of the natural world that is viewed through the lens of our previous experience and knowledge.

Science strives to be objective, and is founded in the belief that events can be explained fully by natural causes. Conversely, explanations based in supernatural causes are not considered to be scientific.

Scientific explanations of phenomena observed in the natural world are called hypotheses (singular: hypothesis). Scientific hypotheses must be testable and falsifiable. If the hypothesis is incorrect it can be tested by experimentation and/or observation and proved to be false.

Experimentation and observations can increase our confidence that a hypothesis is a correct explanation of a phenomenon, but can never absolutely prove a hypothesis to be true.

Once a hypothesis has been supported by many experiments and/or observations it is considered by the community of scientists to be a theory. (Note that this is very different from the common use of the word, meaning an opinion or a guess.)

The conclusions of science are subject to change. New studies, which might utilize new techniques and equipment, may reveal that previously accepted theories need to be modified or changed entirely.

Great science is replaced by greater science.

Biology 100/101 Home Page