Science as a Way of Knowing: The Foundations of Modern Biology / Edition 1

by John A. Moore

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674794825
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/15/1999
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE

1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought

Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism

The Paleolithic View

Mesopotamia

Egypt

2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature

The Science of Animal Biology

The Parts of Animals

The Classification of Animals

The Aristotelian System

Basic Questions

3. Those Rational Greeks?

Theophrastus and the Science of Botany

The Roman Pliny

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine

Erasistratus

Galen of Pergamum

The Greek Miracle

4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview

The Bishop of Hippo

Scholastic Thought

Islamic Science

Books on Beasts

Antecedents of a Revolution

5. The Revival of Science

Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure

William Harvey and the Study of Function

Sir Francis Bacon's Great Instauration

Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction

The Very Small—Animalcules

Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells

6. Figur'd Stones and Plastick Virtue

Marine Life on Mountain Tops?

Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures

Baron Cuvier

Quarries of the Paris Basin

Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism

William Smith and the Geological Column

Understanding Nature in 1850

PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT

7. The Paradigm of Evolution

First Questions

The Paradigm of Natural Theology

First Answers

8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses

Have Life Forms Changed over Time?

Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time?

Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution?

Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change?

The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection

Accounting for the Diversity of Life

9. In the Light of Evolution

Comparative Anatomy

Embryonic Development

Classification

Microstructure

Molecular Processes

10. Life over Time

The Origin of Life

The Rise of Multicelled Organisms

What Is a Phylum?

Burgess Shale Metazoans

Early Evolution of the Vertebrates

The Age of Dinosaurs

Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants

The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits

Human Evolution

The Role of Extinction in Evolution

PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS

11. Pangenesis

What Is the Question?

Hippocrates and Aristotle

The Darwinian Answer

Assembling the Data

Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction

Galton's Rabbits

12. The Cell Theory

The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke

Schwann and Cells in Animals

Gametes as Cells

Omnis cellula e cellula?

The Technology of Cell Research

13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity

The Ephemeral Nucleus

Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division

The Chromosomes and inheritance

Gamete Formation

Fertilization

14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics

Model for Monohybrid Crosses

Model for Dihybrid Crosses

Mendel's Laws

Initial Opposition to Mendelism

15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910

Sutton's Model

The Cytological Basis of Mendel's Laws

Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets

Variations in Mendelian Ratios

The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes

16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly

Morgan's First Hypothesis

Morgan's Second Hypothesis

The Fly Room

Linkage and Crossing-Over

The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over

Mapping the Chromosomes

The Final Proof

The Determinants of Sex

The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics

17. The Structure and Function of Genes

One Gene, One Enzyme

The Substance of Inheritance

The Watson-Crick Model of DNA

Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins

The Genetic Code

PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT

18. First Principles

The Peripatetic Stagirite

The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought

Harvey and Malpighi

A Two-Millennial Summing Up

Preformation versus Epigenesis

19. The Century of Discovery

Von Baer's Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum

Darwin's Contribution to Embryology

Haeckel and Recapitulation

20. Descriptive Embryology

Germ Layers

The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo

The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo

21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology

His, Roux, and Mosaic Development

Driesch and Regulative Development

Novelty in Development

Cell Lineage

Nucleus or Cytoplasm?

Fin de Siècle

22. Interactions during Development

Amphibian Organizers

Secondary Organizers

The Reacting Tissue

The Chemical Nature of the Organizer

Putting It All Together

Conclusion

Further Reading

References

Illustration Credits

Index

Editorial Reviews

To pen a single volume embracing the entire history and present compass of ideas about life and its evolution, from the cave art of Lascaux to the molecular genetics of today, is a formidable undertaking. To tell the developing story of biological thought as an illustration of the principles and methods of scientific enquiry in a much broader sense compounds the task. John Moore...has fulfilled these aims amply in a work of enormous scope. He has informed his book with wit, a gentle humanism, and considerable charm. Science as a Way of Knowing may well become a classic.

New Scientist

Emphasizing not just the steady accumulation of understanding but also the way in which understanding was achieved, Moore traces biology from its beginnings in ancient cultures, especially that of Greece, to its emergence as a modern scientific discipline. In sections covering the changing conception of nature in general, evolution, genetics, and organismal development, Moore's selection of case studies and hypotheses builds into a narrative account of the reason's biologists think as they do.

Science News

This volume is a worthy addition to the literature on the history of biology. It explains the foundations of evolution, genetics, and development and the logic behind scientific enquiry with a clarity that will put most writers of...textbooks to shame. It both demystifies science and exalts it.

Nature

This volume is a worthy addition to the literature on the history of biology. It explains the foundations of evolution, genetics, and development and the logic behind scientific enquiry with a clarity that will put most writers of...textbooks to shame. It both demystifies science and exalts it.

Nature Lib

To pen a single volume embracing the entire history and present compass of ideas about life and its evolution, from the cave art of Lascaux to the molecular genetics of today, is a formidable undertaking. To tell the developing story of biological thought as an illustration of the principles and methods of scientific enquiry in a much broader sense compounds the task. John Moore...has fulfilled these aims amply in a work of enormous scope. He has informed his book with wit, a gentle humanism, and considerable charm. Science as a Way of Knowing may well become a classic.

New Scientist

From the Greeks onward, our written records show that humankind has tried to answer ``simple'' questions--what is life, how does it reproduce, and why is there such diversity in plants and animals. Moore, professor emeritus of biology at the University of California at Riverside, traces these questions in history (primarily the 19th and 20th centuries) and their partial solution by biology. The result is a lucid, lengthy intellectual history of biology into which is woven information on geology, theology, people, equipment, and lab technique. Moore clearly explains biological terms, and he uses illustrations in the second part to help clarify biological processes. Much of this material appeared previously in eight essays in the American Zoologist . Recommended for all collections. --Michael D. Cramer, Viriginia Polytechnic & State Univ. Libs., Blacksburg

Library Journal

For the past 25 years, the author 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 answers. This work makes his uncommon wisdom available to students in a lively and richly illustrated account of the history and workings of life. Employs rhetoric strategies including case histories, hypotheses and deductions, and chronological narrative, providing a cultural history of biology and an introduction to the procedures and values of science. Includes b&w historical illustrations, and b&w photos of artifacts. The author is a professor of biology at UC-Riverside, and has written many textbooks in genetics and development. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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