Systems thinking is an increasingly recognized paradigm in education in both natural and social sciences, a particular focus being, naturally, in biology. This article argues that plant biology, and in particular, plant hormonal signaling, provides highly illustrative models for learning and teaching in a systems paradigm, because it offers examples of highly complex networks, ranging from the molecular‐ to ecosystem‐scale, and in addition lends itself to the use of real‐life biological objects.

This book presents analyses of philosophical topics of importance to biology education. It is intended foremost for biology educators and teachers, and aims to show how philosophy of science in general, and philosophy of biology in particular, ...

There appears to be an irresolvable disagreement between “progressives” and “conservatives” regarding the ultimate aims of education. This paper argues that the dispute is irresolvable as it currently stands because the traditional progressive/conservative dichotomies are false and based on distorted half-truths. The current impasse is due to the fact that educationalists and philosophers alike have hitherto misunderstood the fundamental purpose of educational activities. The central claim of this paper is that a biological perspective on education allows one to (...) see past the traditional dichotomies and affords a coherent rationale for a set of curricular priorities by providing the framework necessary to draw principled distinctions between education, training, indoctrination, and enculturation, all without having to draw on contentious politico-ideological commitments. (shrink)

This article reviews the didactic units in biology and environmental education in the context of Latin America, analyzing their design, implementation, and effectiveness in the teaching of environmental and biological topics. Through a literature review and case analysis, the most commonly used teaching strategies are identified and their impact on student learning is evaluated. It highlights best practices and proposes recommendations to improve the quality of biology and environmental education in the region.

At the start of the twenty-first century, warnings have been raised in some quarters about how - by intent or by mishap - advances in biotechnology and related ...

This is an article in Thomas J.J. McCloughlin (Ed.) The Nature of Science in Biology: A Resource for Educators. Graphikon Teo, Dublin. -/- Abstract: Philosophers usually tend to think of animals when they think about life, plants often only appear in their works as on the margins, in the background; they are rarely in the centre. However, plant life involves unique processes, including remarkable modes of interaction between plants and their environments. Needless to say, plants are vital parts of (...) ecosystems. Serious attention to plants provides novel and interesting perspectives on many topics in philosophy of biology, including individuality, organisation and disease. Plant biology should have a substantial part in philosophy education. To support this assertion, this paper briefly describes three topics related to plant-environment interaction and explains some of their philosophical implications. These topics are growth, plant hormones and plant-plant microbiota interactions, all of which present crucial aspects related to some prevalent topics in philosophy of biology such as individuality, systems thinking, and holobiont. (shrink)

One of the central aims of science is explanation: scientists seek to uncover why things happen the way they do. This chapter addresses what kinds of explanations are formulated in biology, how explanatory aims influence other features of the field of biology, and the implications of all of this for biology education. Philosophical treatments of scientific explanation have been both complicated and enriched by attention to explanatory strategies in biology. Most basically, whereas traditional philosophy of (...) science based explanation on derivation from scientific laws, there are many biological explanations in which laws play little or no role. Instead, the field of biology is a natural place to turn for support for the idea that causal information is explanatory. Biology has also been used to motivate mechanistic accounts of explanation, as well as criticisms of that approach. Ultimately, the most pressing issue about explanation in biology may be how to account for the wide range of explanatory styles encountered in the field. This issue is crucial, for the aims of biological explanation influence a variety of other features of the field of biology. Explanatory aims account for the continued neglect of some central causal factors, a neglect that would otherwise be mysterious. This is linked to the persistent use of models like evolutionary game theory and population genetic models, models that are simplified to the point of unreality. These explanatory aims also offer a way to interpret many biologists’ total commitment to one or another methodological approach, and the intense disagreements that result. In my view, such debates are better understood as arising not from different theoretical commitments, but commitments to different explanatory projects. Biology education would thus be enriched by attending to approaches to biological explanation, as well as the unexpected ways that these explanatory aims influence other features of biology. I suggest five lessons for teaching about explanation in biology that follow from the considerations of this chapter. (shrink)

In discussing the origins of the antievolution movement in American high schools within the framework of science and religion, much is overlooked about the influence of educational trends in shaping this phenomenon. This was especially true in the years before the 1925 Scopes trial, the beginnings of the school antievolution movement. There was no sudden realization in the 1920's – sixty years after the "Origin of Species" was published – that Darwinism conflicted with the Bible, but until evolution was being (...) taught in the high schools, there was no impetus to outlaw it. The creation of "civic biology" curricula in the late 1910's and early 20's, spearheaded by a close-knit community of textbook authors, brought evolution into the high school classroom as part of a complete reshaping of "biology" as a school subject. It also incorporated progressive ideologies about the purposes of compulsory public education in shaping society, and civic biology was fundamentally focused on the applications of the life sciences to human life. Antievolution legislation was part of a broader response to the ideologies of the new biology field, and was a reaction not only to the content of the new subject, but to the increasingly centralized control and regulation of education. Viewing the early school antievolution movement through the science-religion conflict is an artifact of the Scopes trial's re-creation of its origins. What largely caused support for the school antievolution movement in the South and particularly Tennessee were concerns over public education, which biology came to epitomize. (shrink)

Remapping Biology with Goethe, Schelling, and Herder recruits a Romantic philosophy of biology into contemporary debates to both integrate the theoretical implications of ecology, evolution, and development, and to contextualize the successes of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis's gene's-eye-view of biology. The dominant philosophy of biology in the twentieth century was one developed within and for the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. As biologists like those developing an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis have pushed the limits of this paradigm, fresh philosophical (...) approaches have become necessary. This book makes the case that an organicism developed by the 19th century figures Goethe, Schelling, and Herder offers surprising resources to navigate the contemporary biological and evolutionary terrain. This "metamorphic organicism" resonates with present trends in biological theory that emphasize process, organismal dynamics, ecology, and agency. It also proposes strategies for reintegrating reductive and mechanistic maps of biology, like those of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, into richer theoretical representations of life. Drawing from cutting-edge biology, Romantic history, and perspectival pluralist literatures, this integrated history-and-philosophy-of-biology will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the genesis of current theoretical tensions in evolutionary biology, and to those seeking constructive ways to resolve those tensions, including practicing biologists and educators. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is a current tool that is used in different areas of the human life with the purpose of facilitating and directing the processes in distinct sceneries of society. This research aimed to use AI as an educational resource in teaching and learning process in the area of biology for students at the Adventist School CEA Cambulos in the city of Cali. A qualitative research methodology was used, with data collection techniques such as observation and interviews, presenting an (...) action research approach. The main results were the potential of AI to enhance learning, the disposition of students to learn through it, and the need for training in the educational sector for its inclusive use and achieving responsible and effective results. That is how it is considered the challenge of reflecting the imminent arrival of AI in the student context and being prepared to be part of the transformation that can be generated in pedagogical processes. (shrink)

Deweyan pedagogy seeks to promotes growth, characterized as an increased sensitivity, responsiveness, and ability to participate in an environment. Growth, Dewey says, is fostered by the development of habits that enable further habit formation. Unfortunately, humans have their own habitual ways of encountering other species, which often do not support growth. In this article, I briefly review some common conceptions of learning and the process of habit-formation to scope out the landscape of a more responsible and responsive approach to taking (...) growth seriously. What emerges is a reflexive biosemiotics that has humans explicitly concerned with the in situ emergence of new signification in themselves and in other organisms. This requires we take a pedagogical stance in our attitudes and practices towards other species, which we can enrich with insights derived from re-interpreting traditional empirical studies. By freeing the habit-forming process from confining stereotype, a biological pedagogy can enable a more fluid and creative biosphere, unencumbered to explore unfolding possibilities in semiotic space. (shrink)

This paper is based on notes taken during a three day lecture given by Humberto Maturana in St Kilda, Victoria, August 7th - 9th, 1993. It was obvious from the participants that many non biologists have found Maturana's work to be influential in their thinking. The audience included immunologists, family therapists, academics, architects, agriculturalists and information technologists.

The need to be surrounded by stories, through a continuous production of and listening to narrations, is a distinctive feature of humankind. Even biology, although part of the Natural Sciences, is a discipline that “tells stories”, because it has to do with time, with the relationships between organisms and with the depths and transformations of life. Starting from the assumptions of a reading pedagogy that promotes the pleasure of reading among children, without the aim to educate and conform, the (...) purpose of this contribution is to bring out a specific didactic potential scattered throughout children’s novels, to propose interdisciplinary learning-teaching paths in biology at school by including children’s literature in science classes. (shrink)

The present education system is mainly object oriented material in nature but not subjective or spiritual. We study mainly subject viz. physic, chemistry, Biology, Computer, Applications, and Engineering etc.; which are related to the objective world, but we don’t ourselves, or the subjective world. There is story associated with a famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, who ones asked his disciples, what do you want to become in future?” One of them said that he wanted to become a lawyer, another (...) wanted to become a politician, so on and so forth. But one student told that he wanted to become a ‘man’. To become a man is very important, for unless we become a real man first, we will not be able to handle objective knowledge properly. That is why, speaking about education Swami Vivekananda said, “We must have life-building, man making, character-making assimilation of ideas”. So education must be subject-oriented. The subject orientation is an indispensable aspect of personality development. These are self-reliance, self-knowledge, self-control and self-sacrifice. A man of high personality must have the combination of super head, heart and hand. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Scientific advances in genetic analysis have been made possible in recent years by technical developments in computational biology, or bioinformatics. Bioinformatics has opened up the human genome to diverse analyses involving automated laboratory hardware and machine learning algorithms and software. As part of an emerging field of social genomics, recent educational genetics studies using big data have begun to raise challenging findings linking DNA to predicted life outcomes. Bioinformatic technologies and techniques including ‘genome-wide association’ and ‘polygenic scoring’ are (...) producing new kinds of genetic biodata and expert knowledge for rethinking the upbringing and education of children. This article takes as an empirical opening a recent epistemic and ethical controversy over the use of biodata to make genetic predictions about educational, socio-economic and life outcomes, detailing the forms of expert knowledge and technologies involved these predictions, and exploring the social and ethical implications of data-intensive bioinformatics. (shrink)

In this accessible guide, science educator Michael J. Reiss and philosopher Michael Ruse argue that organicism-rather than mechanism-is the best way to understand the nature of life, and detail the resulting implications for biology, philosophy, education, and policy.

At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false-positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal and belief stances); (...) the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology. (shrink)

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent (...) had a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function-predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat-predictive”), or had no implications (“non-predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function- and habitat-predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose-based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose-based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger-scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education. (shrink)

Michurinist biology was introduced to China in 1948; granted a state supported monopoly in 1952; and reduced to parity with western genetics from 1956. The Soviets exported it through the propaganda agencies Sino Soviet Friendship Association and VOKS. China’s Ministry of Agriculture achieved broad public awareness and acceptance of Michurinist biology through a translation, publication, and Soviet guest speakers campaign – all managed by a team of agriculturalists led by Luo Tianyu, a veteran CCP cadre. The campaign grew (...) exponentially, but did not affect university or Chinese Academy of Sciences biology. Luo Tianyu’s failed attempt to force Michurinist biology on a Beijing university triggered its second stage: monopoly status and a ban on “Mendelist-Morganist” biology in teaching, research, and publication. The CCP Central Committee supported this policy believing that Michurinst biology would increase agricultural production for the forthcoming first Five Year Plan; whereas, western genetics had no practical value. Michurinist biology flourished at all levels of education, research, and science literature; Western genetics was completely shut down. This only began to change when the CCP Central Committee became wary of China’s dependency on Soviet technical expertise and failure to fully utilize that of China. Change was further promoted by significant attacks on Michurinist biology by Soviet and East German biologists. Soon, these developments informed China’s “genetics question,” which became a test case for larger questions about the definition of science and the relationship between scientists and the state. Under the guidance of Lu Dingyi’s Central Committee Propaganda Department, the CCP eventually decided that, henceforth, science controversies would only be resolved by the science community; and that monopolies or ideological orthodoxies would not be imposed on science. At the same time, the CCP rescinded Michurinist biology’s monopoly and the ban on western genetics. By the mid-1960s western genetics had successfully restored itself, largely due to the leadership of C. C. Tan, a former student of Dobzhansky. Michurinist biology’s presence shrank and it became marginalized. (shrink)

Research over the last decades has stimulated a paradigm shift in biology from assuming fixed and dichotomous male and female sexual strategies to an appreciation of significant variation in sex and sexual behaviour both within and between species. This has resulted in the development of a broader biological understanding of sexual strategies, sexuality and variation in sexual behaviour. However, current introductory biological textbooks have not yet incorporated these new research findings. Our analysis of the content of current biology (...) texts suggests that in undergraduate biology curricula variation in sexual behaviour, sexual strategies and sexuality barely feature, even though sex is discussed in a range of contexts. In this aspect, biological teaching is lagging behind current research. Here, we draw attention to new findings in the biology of sex, and suggest how these might be incorporated in undergraduate teaching to provide a more contemporary and inclusive education for biology students. (shrink)

It has been asserted that there is no one universal proposition with which all philosophers would agree, including this one. The pre dicament has rarely been recognized and almost never accepted, although neither has it been successfully challenged. If the claim holds true for philosophy taken by itself, how much more must it of religion, the hold for crossfield interests, such as the philosophy philosophy of science and many others. The philosophy of educa tion is a particular case in point. (...) The topic of education itself is generally regarded as a dull af fair, a charge not entirely without substance. The blame for this usually falls on the fact that it has no inherent subject matter. The teachers of history teach history, the teachers of biology teach biology; but what do the teachers of education teach? Presumably how to teach; but this simply will not do because every topic requires its own sort of instruction. (shrink)

An Archaeology of Educational Evaluation: Epistemological Spaces and Political Paradoxes outlines the epistemology of the theories and models that are currently employed to evaluate educational systems, education policy, educational professionals and students learning. It discusses how those theories and models find their epistemological conditions of possibility in a specific set of conceptual transferences from mathematics and statistics, political economy, biology and the study of language. The book critically engages with the epistemic dimension of contemporary educational evaluation and is (...) of theoretical and methodological interest. It uses Foucauldian archaeology as a problematizing method of inquiry within the wider framework of governmentality studies. It goes beyond a mere critique of the contemporary obsession for evaluation and attempts to replace it with the opening of a free space where the search for a mode of being, acting and thinking in education is not over-determined by the tyranny of improvement. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, education policy and social science. (shrink)

EM Music Education /EM is a collection of thematically organized essays that present an historical background of the picture of education first in Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, then Early-Modern Europe. The bulk of the book focuses on American education up to the present. This third edition includes readings by Orff, Kodály, Sinichi Suzuki, William Channing Woodbridge, Allan Britton, and Charles Leonhard. In addition, essays include timely topics on feminism, diversity, cognitive psych, testing (the Praxis exam) (...) and the No Child Left Behind Act. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology has led to the rise of different issues in relation to human life and security as well as the environment. These issues also paved the way for the field of Bioethics with its principles aiming to uphold moral standards on these issues. This study aimed to test and modify the theoretical models of the factors influencing the conviction schemas of BS Biology Bioethics students of a state university toward bioethical issues. One hundred ten (110) (...) undergraduate students were pre-tested and post-tested for comprehension of Bioethics principles, moral disengagement, and convictions toward bioethical issues. Identified personal factors were also retrieved for testing. Results showed that the Bioethics course has increased the participants’ comprehension of Bioethics principles, moral disengagement, and convictions. Stepwise multiple regression results revealed that anxiety, extraversion, exposure to media, and moral disengagement can predict pre-convictions. On the other hand, only moral disengagement was found to predict post-convictions. Furthermore, moral disengagement can be predicted by convictions before the course while anxiety, openness to change, and convictions were the predictors after the course. The proposed theoretical model was for tested goodness of fit using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and acceptance was based on the model fit criteria. Since the proposed model was not found to fit the data, this was revised based on the results of multiple regression and correlation among exogenous variables. Three models were constructed and found to fit the data adequately. These models show the direct and indirect effects of personal factors and moral disengagement on convictions. The mediating effects of moral disengagement and convictions to each other were also shown. Findings further imply that the ability to understand the principles does not influence convictions, but rather moral disengagement has a greater influence on the said factor. Improving moral education by integrating Bioethics to the curriculum is recommended to further strengthen the moral judgement and reasoning of students. (shrink)

Ideas of racial genetic determinism, though unsupported by scientific evidence and atavistic, are common and readily apparent in American medical education. These theories of biologic essentialism have documented negative effects in learners, including increased measures of racial prejudice.

The philosophy of education is among the least celebrated sub-disciplines of Anglo-American philosophy. Its neglect is hard to reconcile, however, with the fact that human beings owe their distinctive psychological powers to cumulative cultural evolution, the process in which each generation inherits the collective cognitive achievements of previous generations through cultural, rather than biological, transmission. This paper examines the work of Eval’d Il’enkov, who, unlike his Anglo-American counterparts, maintains that education, broadly understood, is central to issues in epistemology (...) and philosophy of mind. I expound Il’enkov’s position and defend it from five objections: (1) that Il’enkov treats education as a vehicle of social engineering; (2) that he is unduly preoccupied with controlling human development; (3) that he implausibly portrays the mind as a tabula rasa; (4) that his position is utopian; and (5) that it is technocratic. Defending Il’enkov illuminates a variety of issues about the objectives and ideals of education, formal and informal. I conclude that Il’enkov’s ideas, if complemented by those of other thinkers, Russian and Western, can help rejuvenate philosophy of education and reinstate the field at the centre of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The fiduciary nature of the patient-physician relationship requires clinicians to act in the best interest of their patients. Patients are vulnerable due to their health status and lack of medical knowledge, which makes them dependent on the clinicians’ expertise. Competent patients, however, may reject the recommendations of their physician, either refusing beneficial medical interventions or procedures based on their personal views that do not match the perceived medical indication. In some instances, the patients’ refusal may jeopardize their health or life (...) but also compromise the clinician’s moral responsibility to promote the patient’s best interests. In other words, health professionals have to deal with patients whose behavior and healthcare decisions seem counterproductive for their health, or even deteriorate it, because of lack of knowledge, bad habits or bias without being the patients’ free voluntary choice. The moral dilemma centers on issues surrounding the limits of the patient’s autonomy (rights) and the clinician’s role to promote the well-being of the patient (duties). In this paper we argue that (1) the use of manipulative strategies, albeit considered beneficent, defeats the purpose of patient education and therefore should be rejected; and (2) the appropriate strategy is to empower patients through patient education which enhances their autonomy and encourages them to become full healthcare partners as opposed to objects of clinical intervention or entities whose values or attitudes need to be shaped and changed through education. First, we provide a working definition of the concept of patient education and a brief historical overview of its origin. Second, we examine the nature of the patient-physician relationship in order to delineate its boundaries, essential for understanding the role of education in the clinical context. Third, we argue that patient education should promote self-rebiasing, enhance autonomy, and empower patients to determine their therapeutic goals. Finally, we develop a moral framework for patient education. (shrink)

Vertebrate paleontology was not readily incorporated into interdisciplinary activities at the University of Chicago. During the university’s first forty years serious disputes arose over the subject’s parameters and departmental affiliation. Only after World War II did a cooperative, interdisciplinary program emerge. Changes in biology and geology influenced that development, but even more important were local research and educational initiatives that provided the impetus and resources to create an innovative program.

Educated Papua New Guineans’ conceptual ecologies need to accommodate competing and conflicting traditional ethnoscientific, Western religious and modern scientific paradigms. Papua New Guinea is a constitutionally self-declared ‘Christian country’ and evolution is a controversial issue. The upper secondary school biology syllabus contains a terminating unit on evolution but the curriculum is of expatriate design and the rapid localisation of senior educational positions makes the views of indigenous teaching personnel a high research priority, particularly in the light of the current (...) upgrading of secondary teacher training to degree level. This paper presents data arising from a study of trainee primary and secondary science teachers’ views towards evolution education. Primary science trainees were found to exhibit a poor awareness of the centrality of evolution to modern biology. For secondary science trainees, it was found that exposure to upper secondary school biology, in spite of adding little to students’ knowledge about evolution, was associated with their increasingly positive attitudes towards evolution education, as was the dual acceptance of evolution and religious belief. (shrink)

The article examines education from the perspective of its goals and functions. The development of thinking skills is considered as both the goal and function of education, and the process of thinking as a means of education. Education is broadly understood as the creation of an image, and narrowly as the complex of social institutions that carry out educational activity. As a mechanism of socialization, education is one of the most important historically formed tools for (...) the training and development of thinking ability, which is the main instrument of the evolutionary strategy ofhomo sapiens.The article discusses the ontological status of thought as an attributive property ofhomo sapiensthat defines human being. Thinking is a psychic reality rooted in biological processes, the fundamental basis of all cognitive and human activity-based processes. The author conducts a philosophical analysis of the concepts of thinking, good thinking, qualitative thought, and education. Philosophizing is considered as a special type of thinking, and the article researches its instrumental function, the potential ability to produce sanity, prudence, an analytical approach to any situation, and the ability to make independent decisions. Common to all philosophizing subjects will be that they will act as “demiurges” of their world, which they will be able to fill with their own meanings and values. Philosophical thinking is free thinking, which has a playful character, and therefore it can be defined as a game of meanings. The article describes existing approaches to the development of the philosophical education of children. The author draws attention to the advantage of the Russian system of higher education in connection with the compulsory teaching of philosophy, and argues to develop philosophical education for schoolchildren. The article concludes that the philosophical component of education at all levels, from elementary school to university, is an effective way to form high-quality thinking among students. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to evaluate the role played by Alfonso Luis Herrera and Isaac Ochoterena in the institutionalization of academic biology in Mexico in the early 20th century. As biology became institutionalized in Mexico, Herrera's basic approach to biology was displaced by Isaac Ochoterena's professional goals due to the prevailing political conditions at the end of 1929. The conflict arose from two different conceptions of biology, because Herrera and Ochoterena had different discourses that (...) were incommensurable, not only linguistically speaking, but also socioprofessionally. They had different links to influential groups related to education, having distinct political and socioprofessional interests. The conflict between Herrrera and Ochoterena determined the way in which professional biology education has developed in Mexico, as well as the advancement in specific research subjects and the neglect of others. (shrink)

For the past 500 years, to varying degrees, the processes of religious secularization have been occurring in what today are the wealthy, highly educated, industrialized nations of the world. They are causing organized religion, as a social institution, to go from being a very important influence on the lives of people and the nations in which they live to being a smaller influence, or almost no influence at all. Various disciplines from theology to psychology to sociology have tried to explain (...) secularization, each discipline contributing something unique. One discipline that has not contributed has been biology. From a biological perspective, based on observation and reasoning, at least one of the ultimate functions of the physical forms associated with religion appear to be that of in-group marker for a breeding population, which, as will be shown, is how all religions start. Religions structure larger human populations into smaller “clusters” that are separate in-group breeding populations. The clustering into smaller in-group breeding populations prevents the spread of contagious diseases and creates inter-group competition and intra-group cooperation, both of which have contributed to human eusociality, a very rare type of social organization that will be explained. As the physical forms of religion are losing this in-group-marker function of clustering populations with modernity, a general biological principle comes into play, which is “form follows function, and as function wanes, so does form.” When applied to religion, “form” means the physical components by which all religions are built. The specific meaning of “physical,” as used here, will be explained in the article. This biological perspective, which is counter-intuitive and can generate testable hypotheses, should complement, not compete, with perspectives from other disciplines. Physical forms in biology can and often do have more than one function, so the same form with a biological function can also have psychological and theological functions. The physical forms of religion are its objects of natural (genetic and cultural) selection. As socio-economic modernity spreads through the world, the evolutionary biological trajectory suggests that religion, as a social institution, will eventually become extinct. (shrink)