Introduction to Biology

Pre-Historic Period
 The first major turning point in biological
knowledge came with the Neolithic
Revolution about 10,000 years ago.
 Humans first domesticated plants for
farming, then livestock animals to
accompany the resulting sedentary
societies.
 Started to accumulate information about
the behavior of plants and animals in their
environment while foraging.
 Developed cultivation or crops and
domestication of wild animals
 Beginning of Ancient Biology
4th – 5th B.C
Began with the work and thought of
Aristotle. He is the “Founding Father of
Biology”
Focusing on biological causation and the
diversity of life
Asked the question: “What is life?”
His student Theophrastus attempted to
classify and describe plants.
Biology Enters a Period of
Relative Decline
In the profoundly Christian
centuries of the European
Middle Ages the prevailing
mood is not conducive to
scientific enquiry. God knows
best, and so He should - since
He created everything.
 A New Birth of
Investigation in Biology
(1500 – 1600)
Aelius Galenus or
Claudius Galenus

Galen demonstrated that

living arteries contained
blood through dissection
of apes and pigs.
Andreas Vesalius
In the 16th century
Flemish physician
Andreas Vesalius
revolutionized the
practice of medicine by
providing accurate and
detailed descriptions of
the anatomy of the
human body, which were
based on his dissections
of cadavers.
 William Harvey
Was an English physician
who is credited with
being the first in the
Western world to
describe correctly and in
exact detail the systemic
circulation and properties
of blood being pumped
around the body by the
heart.
Beginnings of Modern Biology
17 – 18
th th

Century
Robert Hooke

He observed cells in

cork.
He coined the term
"cells”.
 Anton van
Leeuwenhoek
 Invented the Microscope
 in 1674 he discovered infusoria
(protists in modern zoological
classification)
 in 1676 he discovered bacteria, (e.g.
large Selenomonads from the human
mouth)
 Carolus Linnaeus
 The Father of Modern
Taxonomy
 Linnaeus's prime contribution
to taxonomy was to establish
conventions for the naming
of living organisms that
became universally accepted
in the scientific world--the
work of Linnaeus represents
the starting point of binomial
nomenclature.
Robert Brown
 He recognized and named
the nucleus as a constant
constituent of living cells in
most plants
 Improved the natural
classification of plants by
establishing and defining
new families and genera.
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet,
Chevalier de Lamarck

 First Scientist to propose a

mechanism for how organism
change.
 Theory of change through use
and disuse
 Through time, a generation
would use an organ more than
previously, and would pass
those traits on their offspring.
Charles Darwin

 Darwin proposed that species can

change over time, that new species
come from pre-existing species, and
that all species share a common
ancestor.
 Gregor Johann Mendel
Father of Genetics
Through his work on pea plants,
discovered the fundamental laws of
inheritance.
Mendel’s Law of Heredity
The Law of Segregation
The Law of Independent Assortment
The Law of Dominance
Louis Pasteur
Founded the science of
microbiology and immunology and
proved that most infectious
diseases are caused by micro-
organisms.

He created the first vaccine for

rabies
 The Emergence of Biological Disciplines
19th Century

Up through the 19th century, the scope of biology was largely

divided between medicine, which investigated questions of
form and function, and natural history, which was concerned
with the diversity of life and interactions among different
forms of life and between life and non-life.
By 1900, much of these domains overlapped, while natural
history (and its counterpart natural philosophy) had largely
given way to more specialized scientific disciplines—cytology,
bacteriology, morphology, embryology, geography, and
geology
 Twentieth Century Biological Sciences

At the beginning of the 20th

century, biological research was
largely a professional endeavor.
Most work was still done in the
natural history mode, which
emphasized morphological and
phylogenetic analysis over
experiment-based causal
explanations.
Here are some of the major studies that evolved
during this period.
 Ecology and environmental science
 Classical genetics, the modern synthesis, and
evolutionary theory
 Biochemistry, microbiology, and molecular biology
 Origins of molecular biology
 Expansion of molecular biology
 Biotechnology, genetic engineering, and genomics
 Recombinant DNA
 Molecular systematics and genomics
 Twenty-First Century Biological Sciences

New fields of biological sciences

research emerged including:
Bioinformatics
Neuroscience
Theoretical biology
Computational Genomics
Astrobiology
Synthetic Biology