BIOL 1201 Lecture : BIOS 2014 Notes
Document Summary
What is science: a body of knowledge, an approach to understanding nature. What do scientists do: make observations, attempt to discern patterns, assume that the future is like the past. There are two important points about this scheme: science only deals with phenomena which can be observed, we assume that the future is like the past. Scientific method: observations, generalization or model, predictive statements or hypothesis, tests. Terminology: hypothesis = best educated guess, theory = broad base of evidence from many sources that agree on an explanation of how nature works, law = what we know based on evidence and testing. ***hypothesis are usually narrow in scope; theories have broad explanatory power. What are the characteristics of living systems: organization, energy use, development, reproduction, evolve, respond to the environment. Approaches to studying biology: reductionist break down and isolate, holist interactions among species, nutrients and phenomena.
