CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

CORE CONCEPTS

1.1 The scientific method is a deliberate way of asking and answering questions about the natural world.

1.2 Life works according to fundamental principles of chemistry and physics.

1.3 The fundamental unit of life is the cell.

1.4 Evolution explains the features that organisms share and those that set them apart.

1.5 Organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment, shaping ecological systems that sustain life.

1.6 In the 21st century, humans have become major agents in ecology and evolution.

Every day, remarkable things happen within and all around you. Strolling through a local market, you come across a bin full of crisp apples, pick one up, and take a bite. Underlying this unremarkable occurrence is a remarkable series of events. Your eyes sense the apple from a distance, and nerves carry that information to your brain, permitting identification. Biologists call this cognition, an area of biological study. Stimulated by the apple and recognizing it as ripe and tasty, your brain transmits impulses through nerves to your muscles. How we respond to external cues motivates behavior, another biological discipline. Grabbing the apple requires the coordinated activities of dozens of muscles that move your arm and hand to a precise spot. These movements are described by biomechanics, yet another area of biological research. And, as you bite down on the apple, glands in your mouth secrete saliva, starting to convert energy stored in the apple as sugar into energy that you will use to fuel your own activities. Physiology, like biomechanics, lies at the heart of biological function.

The study of cognition, behavior, biomechanics, and physiology are all ways of approaching biology, the science of how life works. Biologists, scientists who study life, have come to understand a great deal about these and other processes at levels that run from molecular mechanisms within the cell, through the integrated actions of many cells within an organ or body, to the interactions among different organisms in nature. We don’t know everything about how life works—in fact, it seems as if every discovery raises new questions. But biology provides us with an organized way of understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Why study biology? The example of eating an apple, which we will follow through this chapter, was deliberately chosen because it is an everyday occurrence that we ordinarily wouldn’t think twice about. The scope of modern biology, however, is vast, raising questions that can fire our imaginations, affect our health, and influence our future. How, for example, will our understanding of the human genome change the way that we fight cancer? How do bacteria in our digestive system help determine health and well-being? Will expected increases in the temperature and acidity of seawater doom coral reefs? Is there, or has there ever been, life on Mars? And, to echo the great storyteller Rudyard Kipling, why do leopards have spots, and tigers stripes?

We can describe six grand themes that connect and unite the many dimensions of life science, from molecules to the biosphere. These six themes are stated as Core Concepts and are introduced in the following sections. Throughout the book, these themes will be visited again and again. We view them as the keys to understanding the many details in subsequent chapters and relating them to one another. Our hope is that by the time you finish this book, you will have an understanding of how life works, from the molecular machines inside cells and the metabolic pathways that cycle carbon through the biosphere to the process of evolution, which has shaped the living world that surrounds (and includes) us. You will, we hope, see the connections among these different ways of understanding life, and come away with a greater understanding of how scientists think about and ask questions about the natural world. How, in fact, do we know what we think we know about life? And we hope you will develop a basis for making informed decisions about your career and the actions you take as a citizen.