BIOLOGY 103 FALL, 2003 FORUM 13

Biology, like many other sciences, breaks life down to the small levels. Processes of revisions to thought and understanding are fundamental to the reconstruction and syntheses of these procceses. Each time something is "rebuilt" or reformed, it configuration becomes more lucid.

The implications from "getting it less wrong" are the underlying ties to the progress of understand and "seeking" the truth. The constant cycle of revision propells thought and initates new perspectives, understandings, and tangential findings in the progress. While the finding "truth" is a dubious task, hopefully it will never be accomplished, as the desire to achieve it fuels this cycle.

From this semester, the implications to "keep looking" have given a new perspective to the concept of life, as well the applications in other disciplines.

I agree with much of what you were saying regarding religion. I am Catholic, and come from a very Catholic family. I don't agree with a lot of aspects of the religion. I find it in general to be very hypocritical. Sadly, I even find some of the most "devout" Catholics to be very hypocritical in their lifestyle and actions. Nevertheless, I think many people need religion in their lives as a source of support (i.e., somewhere to turn when all faith has been lost). I was reading some of the links Prof Grobstein put up, and this one almost brought tears to my eyes:

http://serendipstudio.org/forum/newforum/scispir-read.html

(read the post about the woman who was suffering from cancer). It was through religion, and specifically, Catholicism, that this woman was able to come to terms with her terminal illness. With the amount of suffering present in today's world, I think religion has become more significant than ever. I have a feeling that someone is going to say that as science and society progresses, there *may* be increasing proof that God doesn't exist. In other words, that as the years go by, there will be less of a "need" for religion because ppl will become dubious about it and the existence of God. However, I think the "existence of God" belief is just one of those things that has been around for so long and is so established and engrained in society that people would be VERY hesitant to even question it. I think most people would also fear that it's not their place or "immoral" to question something so sacred.

One of the things we focused on in class was size. In biology, little things are all components that together make up bigger things that together make up even bigger things and so on. In the same way, biology is just one story that works together with other stories to make the big picture and helps us to get things "less wrong."

As far as personal thoughts, I now realize that science doesnt have all the answers or all the truths. Experiments aren't done to be right, they are done to find all the wrong answers. Dialogue about science doesnt always have to be so boring. And science does apply to our everyday lives.

It all started with comparing science to life itself. Both involve making and testing observations, formulating new stories. Life is a scientific process!

And then we have clumpiness and the tendency towards it -- which occurs with atoms and universes and, of course, life (cells, organisms, societies), in between.

The trend toward increasing complexity -- this goes hand-in-hand with clumpiness, and applies to molecles, cells, organisms, societies, the universe. In fact, if hydrogen was one of the first atoms (was it?) and

we know it's also the simplest, helium, too -- this may have at one point applied to the formation of atoms, as well!

Ditto for the trend toward increasing diversity -- which goes hand-in-hand with the others.

The trend towards increasing boundedness goes right along with the trend toward increasing specialization; both occur in life and in non-living matter of all sizes.

If you ask me, all this is bloody amazing. I carried it with me to my other classes: we dicussed architecture in c-sem, and I thought, "Here we go, the tendency toward increased boundedness and compartmentalization." In anthropology, we learned about the rise of hominids, and I thought, "Aha! Increased brain complexity;" we came to the rise of city-states, and it was, "Oh, yes, increased clumpiness and specialization."

I alway knew life was governed by laws. What I didn't know was that non-life was governed by some of the same laws. That the only thing distinguishing life from non-life, perhaps, was the speed at which changes took place -- because of enzymes.

That we are not so different from the rest of the universe, after all. That no exceptions need by made for us just because we are living.

I hope I remember this always. It puts every aspect of my life into a new and more logical context. I know we learned about uncertainty and about the inevitability of change, but I do not feel unsettled. What has struck me most is this overarching pattern.

Before I took this class, I never gave much thought to the evolution vs. creationism debate, but we discussed it at length in class and it was very intense. But I think it's important for people to question what they believe is true, because everybody has a different opinion and you can learn a lot from others by listening to their opinions. Therefore, I enjoyed listening to what other people had to say on the subject, and trying to come to my own conclusion.

Also, I realized that life is much more complicated than I ever imagined. I find it amazing that so many different cells in the body need to perform complex functions in order for us to live. I also find it fascinating that although each cell or group of cells performs its own task, it does so without a director or leader. This makes me think that cells are more advanced than humans since we need a person in charge to establish order.

Another thing I learned this semester was about diversity. I learned that not only is diversity beneficial to organisms, it is essential. The whole discussion we had about reporduction with variance and genetic expression made me value our differences as people and as a race.

Throughout the course, not only did I learn about biology and science, I learned about how to get things "less wrong" and how to search for a way to summarize observations in the most accurate way without labeling it as a "truth". I realized that while science is not truth, scientists will continue exploring the universe to see what new observations they can make. And that while we will never come to the "truth", we can conclude certain aspects of life which are useful to us to study. That, I think, was the most valuable lesson I learned from this course.


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