This book complements fact-drive textbooks in introductory biology courses or courses in
biology and society by focusing on several important points: (1) Biology as a process of doing
science emphasizing how we know what we know. (2) It stresses the role of science as a social
as well as intellectual process one that is always embedded in its time and place in
history.In dealing with the issue of science as a process the book introduces students to the
elements of inductive and deductive logic hypothesis formulation and testing the design of
experiments and the interpretation of data. An appendix presents the basics of statistical
analysis for students with no background in statistical reasoning and manipulation. Reasoning
processes are always illustrated with specific examples from both the past (eighteenth and
nineteenth century) as well as the present.In dealing with science and social issues this book
introduces students to historical sociological and philosophical issues such as Thomas Kuhn's
concept of paradigms and paradigm shifts the social-constructions view of the history of
science as well as political and ethical issues such human experimentation the eugenics
movement and compulsory sterilization and religious arguments against stem cell research and
the teaching of evolution in schools. In addition to specific examples illustrating one point
or another about the process of biology or social-political context a number of in-depth case
studies are used to show how scientific investigations are originated designed carried out in
particular social cultural contexts. Among those included are: Migration of monarch butterflies
John Snow's investigations on the cause of cholera Louis Pasteur's controversy over
spontaneous generation the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and the Tuskegee syphilis
experiment.
