Special Sciences and the Unity of Science

Special Sciences and the Unity of Science PDF

Author: Olga Pombo

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9400720300

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Science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspectives, and hypotheses into the scientific corpus takes place slowly. The apparent disunity of the sciences is the unavoidable consequence of this gradual integration process. Some thinkers label this dynamical circumstance a ‘crisis’. However, a retrospective view of the practical results of the scientific enterprise and of science itself, grants us a clear view of the unity of the human knowledge seeking enterprise. This book provides many arguments, case studies and examples in favor of the unity of science. These contributions touch upon various scientific perspectives and disciplines such as: Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Economics.

Multiplicity in Unity

Multiplicity in Unity PDF

Author: Carlos M. Herrera

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-11-15

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0226327957

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Plants produce a considerable number of structures of one kind, like leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds, and this reiteration is a quintessential feature of the body plan of higher plants. But since not all structures of the same kind produced by a plant are identical—for instance, different branches on a plant may be male or female, leaf sizes in the sun differ from those in the shade, and fruit sizes can vary depending on patterns of physiological allocation among branches—a single plant genotype generally produces a multiplicity of phenotypic versions of the same organ. Multiplicity in Unity uses this subindividual variation to deepen our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary factors involved in plant-animal interactions. On one hand, phenotypic variation at the subindividual scale has diverse ecological implications for animals that eat plants. On the other hand, by choosing which plants to consume, these animals may constrain or modify plant ontogenetic patterns, developmental stability, and the extent to which feasible phenotypic variants are expressed by individuals. An innovative study of the ecology, morphology, and evolution of modular organisms, Multiplicity in Unity addresses a topic central to our understanding of the diversity of life and the ways in which organisms have coevolved to cope with variable environments.

Biology

Biology PDF

Author: Cecie Starr

Publisher: Brooks Cole

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 1064

ISBN-13:

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Cecie Starr and Ralph Taggart are among the most successful authors in introductory, biological science instruction because of their lively approach, engaging writing style, current coverage of the breadth of biology's topics, and their unique illustrations. In this Tenth Edition of Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life, the authors use the important connections among molecular structure, biological function, and evolution to encourage student understanding instead of memorization. For example, Chapter 1 includes a preview of life's unity and diversity with an evolutionary perspective. Similar sections in Chapters 3, 5, and 6, on the structure and function of enzymes and other molecules, prepare students for chapters on cell structure and metabolism, genetics, evolution, anatomy, and physiology. This background prepares students to understand the power of comparative molecular studies in clarifying evolutionary relationships. Connections essays (28 in all) focus on this new integration of molecular structure, function, and evolution. The first essay (1.4) answers an important question: How can life display both unity and diversity? It shows how the theory of evolution by natural selection connects the two. Other essays consider evolutionary interplays between infectious agents and their hosts; cloning and genetically engineered mammals, the evolution of life over the past 3.8 billion years, and archaeopteryx and the ancestry of whales (to show that interpreting the past scientifically requires an intellectual shift). Improvements in the media package meet the high standards instructors have come to expect. There is a new version of the complimentary Interactive Concepts in Biology Student CD-ROM with nearly 800 interactions to clarify and reinforce key concepts. For instructors, there is a Multimedia Manager with art and graphics from the text already in PowerPoint format, as well as CNN Today video clips (294 in all), now available digitally.

Evolution and the Diversity of Life

Evolution and the Diversity of Life PDF

Author: Ernst Mayr

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 742

ISBN-13: 9780674271050

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The diversity of living forms and the unity of evolutionary processes are the focus of these essays. The collection helps form much of the basis of contempoary undertanding of evolutionary biology.

Consilience

Consilience PDF

Author: E. O. Wilson

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-11-26

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 0804154066

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.

Unity and Disunity in Evolutionary Biology

Unity and Disunity in Evolutionary Biology PDF

Author: Richard G. Delisle

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2024-09-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783031426285

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It is not uncommon to see in major areas of research concerned with science that historical studies are accompanied by the rise of complementary or contradictory historiographies. With time, it seems, scholars discover new approaches to study topics, thus questioning old concepts, traditions, periodizations and historical labels. Apparently, this has not been the case in evolutionary thought. In that area, the main historiographic labels such as Darwinian Revolution, Eclipse of Darwinism, and Modern Synthesis have been in place and largely uncontested for about 50 years. Such labels seem to work as irrefutable, and often hidden, premises of many historical reconstructions, philosophical analyses, and scientific conceptualizations. This volume aims to move beyond this state of affair, opening new thinking avenues by revisiting the traditional historiography and laying the groundwork for establishing a “new historiography” that considers the intertwined threads that compose evolutionary biology. Notably, evolutionary studies seem to have been marked by the tension between unification attempts and the proliferation of approaches, methodologies, and styles of thinking. As the contributors to this volume illustrate, research traditions branched off throughout the history of evolutionary thought, before and after Charles Darwin. The resulting complexity challenges traditional thinking categories, throwing a somewhat different light on a more recent label like the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. More than 40 years after the now classic, The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology (1980), edited by Ernst Mayr and William Provine, the contributors to this volume aim to reevaluate where evolutionary biology stands today.

Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary Biology PDF

Author: Max K. Hecht

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1461518474

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This volume is the twenty-ninth in this series, which includes twenty-eight numbered volumes and one unnumbered supplement. The editors continue to focus on critical reviews, commentaries, original papers, and controversies in of the reviews range from anthropology to evolutionary biology. The topics molecular evolution, population biology to paleobiology. Recent volumes have included a broad spectrum of chapters on such subjects as population biology, comparative morphology, paleobiology, molecular phy logenetics, developmental evolutionary biology, systematics, and the history of evolutionary biology. The editors continue to solicit manuscripts in all areas of evolutionary biology. Manuscripts should be sent to anyone of the following: Max K. Hecht, Department of Biology, Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, New York 11367; Ross 1. MacIntyre, Department of Genetics and Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853; or Michael T. Clegg, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521. vii Contents 1. Homology and Embryonic Development Brian K. Hall Introduction .............................................. 1 A Brief History of the Concept of Homology ................. 1 von Baer's Laws ........................................ 4 Germ Layers and Ernst Haeckel ............................ 6 Embryology and Homology ............................... 7 Homology: An Unsolved Problem ............................ 8 Latent Homology ........................................ 8 Serial Homology ........................................ 9 Common Origins and Common Inductions ..................... 12 Mechanisms of Gastrulation ............................... 13 Origin of the Alimentary Canal ............................ 14 Origin of Germ Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 . . . . . . . . . . Induction of Meckel's Cartilage ............................ 15 Induction of the Lens of the Eye ........................... 16 Development of Internal and External Cheek Pouches .......... 18 Selection for Increased Tail Length in Mice .................. 19 Regeneration and Homology .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . .

Genesis

Genesis PDF

Author: Jan Sapp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-09-11

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780198035503

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Genesis: The Evolution of Biology presents a history of the past two centuries of biology, suitable for use in courses, but of interest more broadly to evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biomedical scientists, as well as general readers interested in the history of science. The book covers the early evolutionary biologists-Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin and Wallace through Mayr and the neodarwinian synthesis, in much the same way as other histories of evolution have done, bringing in also the social implications, the struggles with our religious understanding, and the interweaving of genetics into evolutionary theory. What is novel about Sapp's account is a real integration of the cytological tradition, from Schwann, Boveri, and the other early cell biologists and embryologists, and the coverage of symbiosis, microbial evolutionary phylogenies, and the new understanding of the diversification of life coming from comparative analyses of complete microbial genomes. The book is a history of theories about evolution, genes and organisms from Lamarck and Darwin to the present day. This is the first book on the general history of evolutionary biology to include the history of research and theories about symbiosis in evolution, and first to include research on microbial evolution which were excluded from the classical neo-Darwinian synthesis. Bacterial evolution, and symbiosis in evolution are also excluded from virtually every book on the history of biology.