Environmental Biology for Engineers and Scientists (Vaccari/Environmental Biology for Engineers and Scientists) || Biology as a Whole

✍ Scribed by Vaccari, David A.; Strom, Peter F.; Alleman, James E.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 232 KB
• Edition: 1
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 0471722391
• DOI: 10.1002/0471741795.ch2

✦ Synopsis

In this chapter we provide an overview of the broad topic of biology. Much of biological science, as well as the chapters of this book, is reductionist. That is, systems are studied by focusing on their component parts. However, in this chapter we examine biology holistically, stepping back and looking at concepts that connect all of its disparate components.

The most basic concept, which forms the foundation of the entire structure of biology, is the definition of life. A ''vertical'' view of the structure generates a hierarchy of scale from biochemical reactions to the ecosystem. A ''horizontal'' view displays the classifications of living things, the pigeonholes that biologists use to group organisms into species, families, and so on. Connecting the parts of the structure is the theory of evolution, the grand organizing principle that gives the structure resilience, explaining why things are as they are. Finally, stepping back a bit, one can examine the two-way interactions between the structure and its surroundings, the environment.