Science as a Way of Knowing : The Foundations of Modern Biology

by Moore, John Alexander

• ISBN13: 9780674794818
• ISBN10: 0674794818
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-04-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

For the past twenty-five years John Moore has taught biology instructors how to teach biology--by emphasizing the questions people have asked about life through the ages and the ways natural philosophers and scientists have sought the answers. This book makes Moore's uncommon wisdom available to students in a lively and richly illustrated account of the history and workings of life. Employing a breadth of rhetoric strategies--including vividly written case histories, hypotheses and deductions, and chronological narrative--Science as a Way of Knowing provides not only a cultural history of biology but also a splendid introduction to the procedures and values of science.

Author Biography

John A. Moore, the author of numerous textbooks in genetics and development, is Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of California, Riverside.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology	4	(5)
PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE	9	(120)
The Antecedents of Scientific Thought	11	(19)
Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism	12	(3)
The Paleolithic View	15	(5)
Mesopotamia	20	(6)
Egypt	26	(4)
Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature	30	(13)
The Science of Animal Biology	32	(4)
The Parts of Animals	36	(2)
The Classification of Animals	38	(1)
The Aristotelian System	39	(2)
Basic Questions	41	(2)
Those Rational Greeks?	43	(16)
Theophrastus and the Science of Botany	43	(2)
The Roman Pliny	45	(4)
Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine	49	(2)
Erasistratus	51	(1)
Galen of Pergamum	52	(5)
The Greek Miracle	57	(2)
The Judeo-Christian Worldview	59	(18)
The Bishop of Hippo	61	(5)
Scholastic Thought	66	(2)
Islamic Science	68	(1)
Books on Beasts	69	(4)
Antecedents of a Revolution	73	(4)
The Revival of Science	77	(25)
Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure	79	(5)
William Harvey and the Study of Function	84	(2)
Sir Francis Bacon's Great Instauration	86	(6)
Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction	92	(3)
The Very Small---Animalcules	95	(3)
Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells	98	(4)
Figur'd Stones and Plastick Virtue	102	(27)
Marine Life on Mountain Tops?	105	(2)
Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures	107	(3)
Baron Cuvier	110	(5)
Quarries of the Paris Basin	115	(4)
Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism	119	(2)
William Smith and the Geological Column	121	(1)
Understanding Nature in 1850	122	(7)
PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOGUHT	129	(102)
The Paradigm of Evolution	131	(17)
First Questions	136	(2)
The Paradigm of Natural Theology	138	(5)
First Answers	143	(5)
Testing Darwin's Hypotheses	148	(23)
Have Life Forms Changed over Time?	148	(4)
Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time?	152	(5)
Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution?	157	(2)
Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change?	159	(7)
The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection	166	(2)
Accounting for the Diversity of Life	168	(3)
In the Light of Evolution	171	(21)
Comparative Anatomy	172	(8)
Embryonic Development	180	(1)
Classification	181	(3)
Microstructure	184	(3)
Molecular Processes	187	(5)
Life over Time	192	(39)
The Origin of Life	193	(3)
The Rise of Multicelled Organisms	196	(1)
What Is a Phylum?	197	(9)
Burgess Shale Metazoans	206	(3)
Early Evolution of the Vertebrates	209	(7)
The Age of Dinosaurs	216	(3)
Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants	219	(2)
The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits	221	(2)
Human Evolution	223	(1)
The Role of Extinction in Evolution	224	(7)
PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS	231	(154)
Pangenesis	233	(19)
What Is the Question?	233	(2)
Hippocrates and Aristotle	235	(2)
The Darwinian Answer	237	(3)
Assembling the Data	240	(6)
Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction	246	(4)
Galton's Rabbits	250	(2)
The Cell Theory	252	(13)
The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke	253	(3)
Schwann and Cells in Animals	256	(2)
Gametes as Cells	258	(2)
Omnis cellula e cellula?	260	(1)
The Technology of Cell Research	261	(4)
The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity	265	(20)
The Ephemeral Nucleus	266	(1)
Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division	267	(8)
The Chromosomes and Inheritance	275	(2)
Gamete Formation	277	(2)
Fertilization	279	(6)
Mendel and the Birth of Genetics	285	(17)
Model for Monohybrid Crosses	290	(3)
Model for Dihybrid Crosses	293	(3)
Mendel's Laws	296	(4)
Initial Opposition to Mendelism	300	(2)
Genetics + Cytology: 1900--1910	302	(26)
Sutton's Model	304	(2)
The Cytological Basis of Mendel's Laws	306	(6)
Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets	312	(2)
Variations in Mendelian Ratios	314	(8)
The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes	322	(6)
The Genetics of the Fruit Fly	328	(32)
Morgan's First Hypothesis	329	(5)
Morgan's Second Hypothesis	334	(2)
The Fly Room	336	(1)
Linkage and Crossing-Over	337	(6)
The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over	343	(2)
Mapping the Chromosomes	345	(3)
The Final Proof	348	(5)
The Determinants of Sex	353	(3)
The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics	356	(4)
The Structure and Function of Genes	360	(25)
One Gene, One Enzyme	361	(6)
The Substance of Inheritance	367	(4)
The Watson-Crick Model of DNA	371	(7)
Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins	378	(2)
The Genetic Code	380	(5)
PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT	385	(116)
First Principles	387	(16)
The Peripatetic Stagirite	387	(4)
The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought	391	(2)
Harvey and Malpighi	393	(3)
A Two-Millennial Summing Up	396	(3)
Preformation versus Epigenesis	399	(4)
The Century of Discovery	403	(16)
Von Baer's Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum	404	(3)
Darwin's Contribution to Embryology	407	(4)
Haeckel and Recapitulation	411	(8)
Descriptive Embryology	419	(23)
Germ Layers	421	(1)
The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo	422	(11)
The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo	433	(9)
The Dawn of Analytical Embryology	442	(28)
His, Roux, and Mosaic Development	445	(7)
Driesch and Regulative Development	452	(3)
Novelty in Development	455	(1)
Cell Lineage	456	(6)
Nucleus or Cytoplasm?	462	(5)
Fin de Siecle	467	(3)
Interactions during Development	470	(31)
Amphibian Organizers	476	(8)
Secondary Organizers	484	(2)
The Reacting Tissue	486	(5)
The Chemical Nature of the Organizer	491	(1)
Putting It All Together	492	(9)
Conclusion	501	(6)
Further Reading	507	(2)
References	509	(14)
Illustration Credits	523	(2)
Index	525