Synopsis
Science was not always the dominant way of knowing, as we see in this exploration of how human beings over the millennia have sought to understand the phenomena of life. Central to the puzzle are several questions: How did living matter arise, and how does it reproduce itself? How does life develop from a single cell into a complex organism? And how did the vast variety of species we see around us, and those long-extinct, come to be? One of the intellectual wonders of our time has been biologists' gradual solution of these great mysteries, beginning with the investigations of Aristotle and the Greeks, continuing through the experiments and theories of Darwin and his contemporaries, and culminating in the researches of 20th-century geneticists, developmental biologists, paleontologists, and other specialists. 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 his experience available to the general reader in an illustrated account of the history and workings of life. Employing a breadth of rhetorical strategies - including case histories, hypotheses and deductions, and chronological narrative - "Science as a Way of Knowing" aims to provide not only a cultural history of biology but also an introduction to the procedures and values of science. This book's interpretive, non-technical approach to the sciences of life should delight and inform anyone curious about what we knew and when we knew it. It is for the non-specialist seeking a deeper understanding of how modern molecular biology, ecology and biotechnology came to be.
Review
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. 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. 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. account of the reason's biologists think as they do. most writers of...textbooks to shame. It both demystifies science and exalts it. has informed his book with wit, a gentle humanism, and considerable charm. "Science as a Way of Knowing" may well become a classic.
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