ZOOLOGY

• Science


  A way of asking about the natural world to obtain precise answers
• Asking questions about nature is ancient; modern science is about 2000 years old
• Science is separate from activities such as art and religion
• Science


  • Guided by natural law (physical and chemical laws that govern the state of existence)
  • Has to be explanatory by reference to natural law
  • Testable against the observable world
  • Tentative; empirically testable explanations of occurrences in terms of natural law
  • Falsifiable
• Science is neutral regarding religion and does not favor one religious position over another
• Biology


  The science of life; the study of living things
• What biology deals with


  • Investigation of the origin, history, structure, function, identification, classification, distribution, development, inheritance, and significance of living things as well as their relationships and interaction with the environment
• Periods in the history of biology


  • Primitive Period
  • Classical Period
  • Dark Ages
  • Renaissance
  • Modern Era
• Primitive Period

  • Characterized by uncritical accumulation of information mainly derived from the practical necessities of obtaining food, materials for clothing and shelter, substances to cure ailments and necessary information about the human body
  • Accumulation of knowledge was not recorded
  • Information was verbally passed on to the next generation
• Classical Period

  • Egyptians and Babylonians had already wrote down basic knowledge to be passed on to those who followed after
  • Evidences on animal raising and agriculture (as early as 8500 B.C.) were found in Mesopotamia
  • Greeks had great curiosity about the natural phenomena and an ability to organize knowledge and record it
• Greek Scientists

  • Anaximander
  • Hippocrates
  • Aristotle
  • Theophrastus
  • Galen
• Dark Ages

  • Biological darkness enveloped all Europe; downward trend in scientific inquiry and no biologist made critical observations
  • Most common people were illiterate
  • Books were expensive
  • People were busy fighting a series of wars from the Crusades to Mongol invasions
  • Recurrent epidemics of Black Death (Bubonic Plague) swept over Europe which killed about a third of the population
• Modern Era

  • Observations were being made with the first, primitive microscopes
  • Robert Hooke established the concept of Modern Cell Theory
  • Anton van Leeuwenhoek observed sperm cells
  • Matthias Schleiden and Theodore Schwann showed plants and animals are made up of cells
  • Francesco Redi and Lazarro Spallanzani disproved the spontaneous origin of life from nonliving matter
• 18th Century

  • Karl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus established the system of binomial nomenclature in which all living things are arranged by genera and species
• Binomial nomenclature

  Scientific names of organisms consisting of genus and species
• 19th Century

  • Jean Baptiste Lamarck proposed the Theory of Evolution
  • Karl von Baer published on the developmental stages in mammalian eggs
  • Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species and proposed natural selection
  • Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation
  • Gregor Mendel is known as the "Father of Modern Genetics"
• 20th Century

  • Ernst Haeckel stated that an organism was the product of the interaction of its environment with hereditary factors
  • H.E. Cowla, F.E. Clemens, and V.E. Shelford put ecology on a modern basis
  • Thomas Hunt Morgan developed Gene Theory
  • Sir Alexander Fleming developed penicillin
  • James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins proposed the structure of DNA
• The scientific method

  1. Observations

  2. Hypothesis

  3. Experiment

  4. Conclusion

  5. Scientific Theory
• Hypotheses are said to be supported, but not proven
• Theories are the ideas that scientists are MOST SURE OF
• Control

  A replicate set up exactly like the experiment, except it does not have the factor being tested
• The 'activity model' for the process of scientific inquiry shows the more complex interactions that are really involved
• John Snow's investigation of the cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854

  1. Observation: Cholera outbreaks near a water pump in Broadwick Street, cholera affected the digestive tract

  2. Observation: Victims had drunk from the pump, people nearby who drank beer did not get cholera

  3. Hypothesis: Cholera was picked up from the water in the pump

  4. Experiment: Blocked off the pump by removing its handle

  5. Result: The cholera epidemic died out