Science as a way of knowing

Science was not always the dominant way of knowing, as we see in this spirited 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 untangling 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 geneticists, developmental biologists, paleontologists, and other specialists in the twentieth century. For more than twenty years 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 Moore's uncommon wisdom available to the general reader in a lively and richly illustrated account of the history and workings of life. Employing a breadth of rhetorical strategies - including vividly written case histories, hypotheses and deductions, and chronological narrative - Science as a Way of Knowing provides not only a cultural history of biology but also a splendid introduction to the procedures and values of science. This book's interpretive, nontechnical approach to the sciences of life will delight and inform anyone curious about what we knew and when we knew it. It is indispensable reading for the nonspecialist seeking a deeper understanding of how modern molecular biology, ecology, and biotechnology came to be.