As humans, we are adept learning machines. Long before a baby learns that she can change a sheet of paper by crumpling it, she is absorbing vast amounts of information. This learning continues throughout life in myriad ways: learning to ride a bike and to take social cues from friends; learning to drive a car and balance a checkbook; learning to solve a quadratic equation and to interpret a work of art.

Of course, much of learning is necessary for survival, and even the simplest organisms learn to avoid danger and recognize food. However, humans are especially gifted in that we also acquire skills and knowledge to make our lives richer and more meaningful. Many students would agree that reading novels and watching movies enhance the quality of our lives because we can expand our horizons by vicariously being in situations we would never experience, reacting sympathetically or unsympathetically to characters who remind us of ourselves or are very different from anyone we have ever known. Strangely, at least to us as science professors, science courses are rarely thought of as being enriching or insightful into the human condition. Larry Gould, a former president of Carleton College, was also a geologist and an Arctic explorer. As a scientist, teacher, and administrator, he was very interested in science education especially as it related to other disciplines. In his inaugural address when he became president he said, “Science is a part of the same whole as philosophy and the other fields of learning. They are not mutually exclusive disciplines but they are independent and overlapping.” Our goal was to write a book that encourages students to appreciate biochemistry in this broader sense, as a way to enrich their understanding of the world.

vi