[SCI11] Modules 1-6

• This course will take us from the energy and matter from our environment and how they become part of the molecules that make up our smallest cells. We shall study how cells organize into tissues, organs, and organisms. We shall then look at how organisms relate to each other as populations and ecosystems, and how all of these affect us, human society, and how human society affects these in turn.

  
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices (IKSP)

  Traditional knowledge passed on through traditional means for many generations
• IKSPs have been tested and re-tested for thousands of years in the most rigorous real-life laboratories for survival and well-being
• Biocultural knowledge


  Knowledge that is rooted both in the natural environment and what is readily available, at the same time grounded on the culture—values and norms—of the people who hold it
• The earliest material evidence in civilizations that used the written word showed that societies kept track of their livestock and grains, made bread, wine, and cheese, and recorded astronomical data to keep time and predict the weather
• Literacy allowed for the expansion of collective knowledge beyond the Storytellers' collective memories
• The Sumerian belief system encompassed both empirical and the magical, for example, in the treatment of disease
• The Greek philosophers were noted for the treatises that eloquently explain not only their observations, hypotheses, and conclusions about the world and Man's place in it, their works also show in detail the methods by which they obtained these insights
• Aristotle practiced both specialist and generalist modes of study, and has clearly and eloquently outlined his reasoning in his lectures
• Aristotle defined a species: a breeding group of particular animals or plants that can breed and produce offspring that eventually could reproduce
• Later Christian philosophers tried to integrate Genesis with Aristotle. They typically viewed each species as created by God in the beginning, in a hierarchical fashion from the inanimate, animate, to the spiritual beings as a "Great Chain of Being"
• The methods used by these philosophers are similar to that used ancients and indigenous people in that they use their experience, meditation, and learned intuition in trying to understand what they believe is the nature of things
• In early Medieval Europe, the monastic schools were important in terms of education, governance, and practical applications of astronomy and medicine
• The Church had great reach in terms of territory and ideological influence. It was the sole interpreter of the Holy Texts, and the arbiter of the appropriate knowledge and use of knowledge, as it was responsible for its flock not only in this life but also the next
• The exposure of Europe to Near Eastern culture was inevitable, due first to trade via the Silk Road, then the Crusades, and then the colonial expansion. This contact led to the transmission of the combined knowledge from the Arabic, Byzantine, Persian and Indian cultural traditions from the Golden Age of the Islamic Civilization in the 12th century onwards
• Metallurgy, navigation, agriculture, and engineering continued to flourish following the collapse of the Roman Empire
• The exposure of Europe to Near Eastern culture was inevitable, due first to trade via the Silk Road, then the Crusades, and then the colonial expansion
• This contact led to the transmission of the combined knowledge from the Arabic, Byzantine, Persian and Indian cultural traditions from the Golden Age of the Islamic Civilization in the 12th century onwards
• European scholars and scribes were exposed to very different ways that the history of the Earth, natural sciences, and philosophy were understood outside of the constraints of the Catholic Church
• Students in the 12th century: 'They were eager for knowledge and sought it out with enthusiasm. They read the Latin classics, analyzed the texts of Roman law, they read and commented on the works of the Church Fathers. The most advanced scholars knew that the Muslims of Islamic civilization had great storehouses of knowledge, so they traveled to Spain to tap these new sources of information. Others went to Constantinople to obtain translations of Greek manuscripts. In the end, these scholars renewed western knowledge of Greek science and philosophy and to this added the treasures of Arabic mathematics and medicine'
• Islamic scientists and mathematicians developed criticisms of Greek assertions, refined the theories of the classical philosophers to conform to current empirical information, significantly modified Aristotelian ideas, invented Algebra and Trigonometry as new fields of mathematics, and improved on Indian numeral system to include the zero, in what we now know as the Arabic number system
• A resurgence of interest in gaining knowledge in Europe helped in advancing the creation of centers of learning outside the monasteries: the University
• These early European institutions of learning were open to scholars, mainly male feudal lords those who can afford the high fees, but who are neither clerics nor monks
• This level of democratization of education came with a challenge: throughout Europe, traditional authority was questioned, and the new scholars embraced the notion that humanity could be improved not only through prayer and good works, but through rational change
• Aristotelian thought was the dominant view for a millennium in the West
• Aristotle's "Great Chain of Being", as a classification system, was the major organizing principle and foundation of the emerging science of biology until the 18th century
• Only the Aristotelian worldview was taught in all the leading universities of the time
• This changed in mid- 17th century, when the arguments of Descartes proved to be most convincing in the European continent
• Cartesian metaphysics, the mechanistic worldview, the duality between matter and mind, and the Cartesian hypothetico-deductive methodology became accepted by the community of scholars at the time
• The beginnings of the current agnostic, materialistic epistemology in science was a train of reasoning deeply grounded in seemingly disparate threads of methodological skepticism and an inherent assumption of the existence of God
• The zeitgeist of the era being one of change and progress, the long 18th century brought about a spate of different, divergent, and conflicting theories on the origins and purposes of living systems
• Questions on the age of the earth, a subject broached by the exposure to non-Christian doctrine as well as archeological discoveries, were debated
• Evolution of living things were considered with the increasing tolerance for questioning long-established dogma and the discovery of fossils, as well as an openness to test theories by experimentation
• The Experiments on the Generation of Insects, written by Francesco Redi in the late 17th century, served to disprove a once-held notion of spontaneous generation of living things
• The theory on the Transmutation of Life was raised by Lamarck in the early 1800s, arguing for the evolution of species as individuals relate to their environment
• Advances in optics allowed for the visualization and discovery of microscopic entities and paving the way for the study of anatomy in greater detail
• Advances in chemistry eventually allowed for analytical studies of phlogiston (thenceforth purified to what we know now as oxygen gas) and to look into what was once thought of as a metaphysical vital substance that animated living organisms, now conceptualized as proteins called enzymes
• The acceptance and eventual dominance of the hypothetico-deductive method as the Scientific Method, with its materialist, mechanistic, and reductionist philosophy which analyses a larger system by breaking it down into pieces and determining the connections between the parts
• The elegance of classical experiments of the time, with the method of controlling conditions to minimize variables, brings into focus the definitive relationships among two variables, highlighting a direct relationship between a given cause and a given effect
• This capacity to put forward and test various new theories allowed for the growth of the field of Biology, and its benefits spread greatly through medicine, food, and agriculture, among others