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Biology & evolution

Biology connects structure, function, energy and change across generations.

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Introduction to Biology & evolution

How do biologists explain living systems?

Biology & evolution3h · IntroductionBeginner

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Origin of life

How did chemistry become life?

Biology & evolution22h · TopicSome background

Eukaryogenesis

Where did complex cells come from?

Biology & evolution22h · TopicSome background

Morphogenesis

How do cells make a body?

Biology & evolution22h · TopicSome background

Evolution and evidence

What would count as evidence of natural selection?

Biology & evolution14h · TopicSome background

Symbiosis and cells

How can a partnership change the unit of evolution?

Biology & evolution14h · TopicSome background

Read a thinker or author

Nick Lane

Evolutionary biochemistry and accounts of how energy conversion shaped life. Trace the mechanism and distinguish evidence from a proposed historical sequence.

Lynn Margulis

Endosymbiosis and the evolutionary importance of relationships among organisms. Compare the evidence for organelle origins with wider claims about symbiosis.

Michael Levin

Developmental bioelectricity and frameworks for regulation and biological agency. Separate a voltage intervention and observed anatomical outcome from its interpretation.

Alan Turing

Work on computability, machine intelligence and morphogenesis. Begin by distinguishing a mathematical model, an operational test and a biological mechanism.

Aristotle

Arguments about explanation, character and practical judgment. Read a definition together with the examples it is meant to explain.

Evelyn Fox Keller

Historical and philosophical work on scientific explanation, gender and the language of biology. Examine what a metaphor makes researchers look for.

Donna Haraway

Situated knowledge, technoscience and relations among species. Ask where a knowledge claim is made, what it can see and what responsibilities it carries.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Botany, Potawatomi knowledge and arguments about reciprocity. Keep empirical questions and obligations toward the living world visible together.

Connect this subject

Where do we draw the boundary of a self?

Compare descriptions of the self across ethics, cognitive models and developmental biology. The readings use different definitions and methods.

What does energy explain about life?

Study metabolism, cell evolution and bioelectric organisation, while keeping physical measurements distinct from proposed historical explanations.

When does a pattern become an explanation?

Compare symmetry, information and models across mathematics, physics and living systems. Similar vocabulary does not establish identical mechanisms.