Biology

“ Biology, on the other hand, presents us with the spectacle of an evolution [Pg 75] in which the main direction is the raising of the maximum level of certain qualities of living beings, such as efficiency of organs, co-ordination, size, accuracy and range of senses, capacity for knowledge, memory and educability, emotional intensity,—qualities which in one way or another lead to a more efficient control by the organism over the external world, and to its greater independence. ”

“ In our own time biology is the branch of science that is most progressive and occupies the attention of, perhaps, the largest number of investigators who are busy inquiring about the origin of life, the antiquity of man, cerebral psychology, the laws of force manifested in living beings, and the evolution of organic forms in the course of Nature. ”

“ Having now defined the meaning of the word Biology, and having indicated the general scope of Biological Science, I turn to my second question, which is--Why should we study Biology? Possibly the time may come when that will seem a very odd question. That we, living creatures, should not feel a certain amount of interest in what it is that constitutes our life will eventually, under altered ideas of the fittest objects of human inquiry, appear to be a singular phenomenon ”

“ The range of subjects comprehended within the domain of Biology is so wide, and my own acquaintance with them so imperfect, that it is not in my power to lay before you any general outline of the recent progress of the biological sciences. Neither do I feel competent to give you a summary of the present status of any one of the great divisions of our science, such as Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology, Histology, Classification, or Evolution—Philology, Ethnology, or Prehistoric Archæology ”

“ It is apparent that the two lines of inquiry, although they equally relate to what the organism does, rather than to what it is, and therefore both have equal right to be included in the one great science of life, or biology, yet lead in directions which are scarcely even parallel. ”

“ General Aims of Biology in Education
What are the general adaptive contributions of biology to human nature? What are the results in the individual which biology should aim to bring to every student? There are four classes of personal possessions, important in human adaptation, to which biology ministers in a conspicuous way: information and knowledge; ability and skills; habits; and attitudes, appreciations, and ideals. ”

“ Biology is the Science of Life. It seeks to explain the phenomena of all life, whether animal or vegetable. Its methods are observation and experiment. It observes the tiny cell on the surface of an egg yolk, and watches it divide and multiply until it becomes a great mass of cells, which group off or differentiate, and rearrange and alter their shapes. ”

“ THE data of biology are living plants and animals. These are what nature presents. To these we must always go in order to make a beginning at any investigation. Is one interested in ganglionic cells, or germ cells, or liver secretions, or degenerate organs? He must find some kind of animal that has, or produces, or can yield such things. In making a successful quest for "material," it always turns out that a particular individual plant or animal, one or more, furnishes it. ”

“ In order to obtain a Science of Biology, we must analyse the Idea of Life. It has been proved by the biological speculations of past time, that Organic Life cannot rightly be solved into Mechanical or Chemical Forces, or the operation of a Vital Fluid, or of a Soul. ”

“ Biology uses experiment and hence begins with germ cells: social science is based on observation and hence its data are the visible differences which the study of men affords. Both call their data characters, but as a loose terminology creates confusion, I shall call the germinal variations the biologist finds through experiment characters, while the visible differences in men open to observation I shall call traits. The problem then is what is the relation of biologic characters to visible traits? Is there a character for each trait, or do independent laws govern traits? ”

“ Dealing with biology in its general principles, it concerns us only to notice how specially sensitive are the substances of which organisms are built up to the varied influences that act upon organisms. ”

“ However contributory to our culture and welfare other studies may be, biology has, and ever must have, a very special interest of its own: it alone deals with the living organisms which surround us, and which are the only things that share with us that wonderful collocation and interaction of natural forces which we call life. ”

“ Cyclic work in the study of life phenomena and of the needs of organisms for oxygen, food, and reproduction culminates, as it rightly should, in the study of life-processes of man and man's relation to his environment.
In a course in biology the difficulty comes not so much in knowing what to teach as in knowing what not to teach. ”

“ In this chapter we propose to consider Life in its primitive manifestations. Biology is the science of living bodies, or the science of life. Every organ of a living body has a function to perform, and Physiology treats of these functions. ”

“ With the above facts in your minds I would ask you to excuse what at first sight might appear improbable or indecent in any speculations which appear below, and to dismiss from your minds the belief that biology will consist merely in physical and chemical discoveries as applied to men, animals and plants. ”

“ At the same time, by comparing and analyzing the different branches of biology, certain very general laws have been established, particularly in physiology proper, having a bearing upon the development of the individual and the relations of the functions to their organs. We are in possession of a certain number of very broad though purely empiric generalizations on the phenomena upon which the superiority of living things over one another depends. ”

“ The very heart of that school of biology known as materialistic, or mechanistic, is its effort to interpret living beings by ascribing to invisible substances or bodies, located somewhere within the germ-cells and other cells of the body, reality and essentiality of a sort quite unique as contrasted with the visible substances, and the organisms themselves. ”

“ In more recent times biology has been enriched with an enormous amount of facts for which we are indebted to the labors of naturalists, or even of mere breeders, as also to the labors of anatomists and clinicians, but, above all, to researches in experimental physiology, wherein the application of physical-science methods to the discovery of the laws of vital phenomena has been attended with brilliant success. ”

“ For the purpose of indicating some of the directions in which biology has been furthered by the experimental method of investigation, we designate the fields of heredity and evolution, changes in the environment of organisms, studies on fertilization and on animal behavior. ”

“ Biology.—Closely connected with zoölogy is biology, or the science of life, which undoubtedly has achieved the greatest progress made by physical science in the century by the promulgation and victory of the theory of descent by evolution, a theory brought forward by Darwin in 1860, and developed by Haeckel and others. ”

“ We believe very little in biology, or in demonstrations by similarities. Every animal, every organ, every anatomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commencement of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy ”

“ Of the sciences with which the nineteenth century has had much to do, those relating to organic life, classed under the general title of biology, stand prominent, which includes botany and zoology. Subsidiary to these are the sciences of anatomy, physiology, embryology, psychology, anthropology, and several others of minor importance. We have, here laid out before us a very large subject, which has made remarkable progress during the past hundred years, much too great to handle except in brief general terms. ”

“ In like manner Biology is the elaboration of a complete theory of Life, in each and all of its involved manifestations. If different aspects of its phenomena are investigated apart—if one observer busies himself in classing organisms, another in dissecting them, another in ascertaining their chemical compositions, another in studying functions, another in tracing laws of modification; they are {90} all, consciously or un­con­scious­ly, helping to work out a solution of vital phenomena in their entirety, both as displayed by individual organisms and by organisms at large. ”

“ Within certain limits this is true, but if our general knowledge of biology had waited for the perfection of our knowledge of the individual cells of animals, the results would have been disastrous to all concerned. ”

“ The logical connection between this purely scientific doctrine of disease, or pathology, and ordinary biology, is easily traced. Living matter is characterized by its innate tendency to exhibit a definite series of the morphological and physiological phenomena which constitute organization and life. Given a certain range of conditions, and these phenomena remain the same, within narrow limits, for each kind of living thing. ”

“ In all biological problems it is remarkable how entirely dependent we are upon the philosophy and the methods employed in the exact natural sciences. We transfer all that is there obtainable to the problems of biology. ”

“ But the converse, as we have seen, has often been true, and numerous writers—largely because purely biological are simpler than human phenomena—have been obsessed with the idea that the study of biology as such will teach us principles which can be applied directly and wholesale to human problems. ”

“ Biology, too, includes within its range the study of man himself, so far as one side of his nature is concerned; and, as regards his mental and moral qualities, the psychologist and sociologist have already begun to recognize that the progress of their sciences is closely bound up with the development of certain branches of biology. As regards its practical value I might set forth at length the indebtedness of scientific medicine and of sanitary science to biology ”

“ Thus Bionomics is treated in such articles as Evolution, Heredity, Variation, Mendelism, Reproduction, Sex, &c.; Zoo-dynamics under Medicine, Surgery, Physiology, Anatomy, Embryology, and allied articles; Plasmology under Cytology, Protoplasm, &c.; and Philosophical Zoology under numerous headings, Evolution, Biology, &c. ”

“ This placed biology on the same plane with chemistry as a means for training in laboratory methods and discipline, with the added advantage that the subject of biology is much more intimately connected with the student’s everyday life and affairs. ”

“ The Application of Biological Facts to the Benefit of Mankind.—The practical application of biology to the benefit of mankind is a striking feature of present-day tendencies. The activity set on foot by the researches of Pasteur, Koch, and others has created a department of technical biology of the greatest importance to the human race. ”

“ Man being the most complicated of all organised beings, not only are the laws of his vitality the most numerous, and the most practically interesting, but they go far to include all that is to be said of the workings of animal life in general. Thus, then, the mother science of Biology, as a general or fundamental science, comprises Vegetable, Animal, and Human physiology. The classificatory adjunct sciences are Botany and Zoology. It is in the various aspects of the mother science that we look for the account of all vital phenomena, and all practical applications to the preservation of life. ”

“ Why study Biology?—Although biology is a very modern science, it has found its way into most high schools; and an increasingly large number of girls and boys are yearly engaged in its study. These questions might well be asked by any of the students: Why do I take up the study of biology? ”

“ The vital activities taking place in the bodies of higher animals are too complicated and too intricately mixed to admit of clear analysis, and, long ago, physiologists learned that the quest for explanations of living activities lay along the line of investigating them in their most rudimentary expression. The practical recognition of this is seen in our recent text-books upon human physiology, which commonly begin with discussions of the life of these simplest organisms. ”

“ The biologists tell us that all this is an entire mistake. They turn to the physical organisation of man. They examine his whole structure, his bony frame and all that clothes it. They resolve him into the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them to break him up. They consider the performance of his various functions and activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the surface of the world. ”

“ It is the second and perhaps greater task of the biologist to study the organism from the historical point of view, considering it as the product of a continuous process of evolution that has been in operation since life began. ”

“ We may be sure that a search for the influences determining the maintenance and multiplication of living organisms, cannot be successfully carried out unless we understand what is the peculiar property of a living organism—what is the widest generalization of the phenomena that indicate life. ”

“ Grouping together the cases first named, in which a particular change in the circumstances of an organism is followed by a particular change in it, and the cases last named, in which the constant actions occurring within an organism imply some constant actions occurring without it; we see that in both, the changes or processes displayed by a living body are specially related to the changes or processes in its environment. And here we have the needful supplement to our conception of Life. ”