Themes in the Study of Life_Chapter 1

1. What are the levels of biological organizations?

2. What kinds of forms do scientists use in their study if nature?

3. What is the core theme of biology?

Levels of Biological Organizations

The Biosphere > Ecosystem > Communities > Populations > Organs and Organ Systems > Tissues > Cells > Organelles > Molecules

Scientists use two main forms of inquiry in their study of nature.

There is no single scientific method that scientists must follow. However there is the main types of scientific inquiry :

Discovery Science

Hypothesis-Based Science

Discovery science is like descriptive science. It's used by observation and analysis of data. Microscopes, photographs, movies are used in discovery science. Data is recorded observation. The type of logic in discovery science is Inductive Reasoning. It's to generalize from a large of

specific observations.

Hypothesis-Based science propose and test hypothetical explanations. Hypothesis is a tentative answer to a well-fra

med question, educated guess, based on experience and the data available from discovery science. The type of logic is now deductive reasoning. Find a specific result from a general premise. This specific result is found by predictions of experimental or observational results.

The core theme of biology is Evolution.

Evolution is biology's core theme. The scientific explanation for unity and diversity on Earth and for the suitability of organisms to their environments is evolution. '' Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution " by Theodosius Dobzhansky. Scientists group species according to their similarities, domains and kingdoms. ( Taxonomy ) Charles Darwin proposed natural selection as the mechanism for evolutionary adaptation of populations to their environments.

5 main facts from the chapter :

. The biosphere consists of all the environments on Earth that are inhabited by life.

. Ecosystem has two process . Cycling of nutrients and production of energy from sunlight.

. In life's structural hierarchy, the cell has a special place as the lowest level of organization that can perform all activities required for life.

. Genetic information is encoded in the nucleotide sequences of DNA.

. A scientific theory is broad in scope, generates new hypotheses and is supported by a large body of evidence.

This chapter is the first chapter of the book 'Biology' by Campbell and Reece and 5 other authors. This is the introduction of the book and of the biology itself. We learn the basic steps of biology such as its themes, how scientists discover the world and how the biology itself runs on Earth. We learn the relationship of science, technology and society, the culture of science, Charles Darwin and his theories.