All Biology
Overview
iology,
the Grand Science of Life in all its forms and splendor
of existence, is indisputably the most palpable of all
Natural Sciences, as life (from the most beautiful and
exotic plants to the most stunning animals, birds,
insects, and fish) is always around us and in continuous
interaction with us. Our interaction with the kingdom of
life of which we are a part, makes Biology an
indispensable part of studying Nature, as we all, in one
way or another, become, knowingly or unknowingly,
"students of Nature".
At its most basic
form of research and study, Biology and Chemistry form an
indestructible bond and partership as each derives
results from the studies of the other in a most profound
way. Biological Chemistry, or Biochemistry, was born as a
result of this interrelationship between the two (2)
sciences.
The study of
Biology began as man, bewildered by the variety of the
surroundings of his environment began to differentiate
the good from the bad, the beautiful from less beautiful,
the desirable from the less desirable, and the poisonous
from non-poisonous plants and animals. Thus through these
kinds of observations and trials, man began categorizing
his surrounding environment through criteria based upon
his practical needs. This body of knowledge accumulated
and transmitted from generation to generation created a
wealth of information. As this information grew, so grew
the strict Religious teachings advocating the belief that
all the variety to be seen in Nature was the work of the
Creator of the Universe, and any attempt to find
relationships between the different forms of life, was an
attempt towards futility as no such relation could
possible exist. These teachings known as the Creationist
view were for a long time the dominant view of
Nature.
How could
one take into account the beauty and the variety of
flowers if it were not for the Creator to create them?
How could one take into account the food supply that
vegetable provided if it were not for the Creator to
create them? How could one account for the rain and
soil so necessary for the plants, vegetable and
animals to grow and develop if it were not for the
Creator to create all this? How could one account for
the poisonous plants and animals if it were not for
the Creator to give them such attributes? How could
one account for the medicinal plants capable of curing
or alleviating, as if by magic, certain pain and
diseases if it were not for the Creator to create
them? How could one account for the domestication of
certain animals if were not for the Creator to help
transforming them? Is there a need for any other proof
for the existence of the Creator and His divine powers
capable of doing and creating anything that He may
pleases?
Bombarded with
these dominant beliefs by the Church and the Creationist
view of Nature, it was difficult, if not impossible, for
many centuries, for Biology to find its own course and
emerge as a science. But science it became as
revolutionary ideas of the interrelation between various
members appeared to surface, sorting the variety, the
common things and features that many members appeared to
have, and culminating with evolutionary connections and
unified theories of incredible elegance and stunning
insights. The interrelationship between various classes
of living organisms, eventually grew into the monumental
and historic realization that every organism is
connected, in the grand scale of Biology, with any other
organism through a global underlying interconnection that
is called Life.
That humans can be
linked to the Animal Kingdom was too much to be accepted
and reconciled with various religious teachings, as this,
for all practical purposes, represented a mortal blow to
those teachings. With all the furry displayed to suppress
the Biology's evolutionary theories of Nature, nothing
was able to put back Biology at its stone age mentality
and suppression. If anything, from all Natural Sciences,
Biology has emerged as the front runner with respect to
its stunning progress and discoveries entering into its
Golden Age, and indisputably able to serve as a model for
all other natural sciences.
The understanding
of Life, received a tremendous insight when it was
discovered that all living organisms, with no exception,
were made of individual Units or Blocks of Life called
Cells. These Cells, which are the seat of all chemical
processes of Life, were discovered to contain, regardless
of the organism, a type of substance called
DeoxyriboNucleic Acid (or DNA) with the remarkable
property that it contained a complete set of instructions
for the chemical activity of the cell and, carried in
addition, all the hereditary characteristics of the
organism. With this stunning advancement of understanding
Life at its most fundamental level, a new branch of
Biology was born --Molecular Biology.
Our
eleven (11) subject-sections plus The Hall of Fame
section, which can be accessed through the above
Navigational Bar located in the page's heading, are
designed to provide a comprehensive reference to the many
facets and ways of studying and investigating the
subjects of Biology. Aside from the two (2) Index
sections --one by Subject, the other by Author, and
three (3) Forum sections --The RealDeal®
Forum Letters, The RealDeal® Forum Chat
Rooms, and The RealDeal® Forum Workshops,
which are perhaps self-explanatory, the other remaining
six (6) sections need a further introduction as
follows
A special section
entitled The RealDeal® List (and Auxiliary
List) of Most Wanted Solutions was designed to list and
emphasize what is not known or understood from the realm
of Natural Sciences in a way so as to attract both the
attention and the interest in further studying the topics
involved.
Notable unsolved
issues of Biology shall be placed in The
RealDeal® List (and Auxiliary List) of Most
Wanted Solutions section corresponding to Biology.
However, because of the affinity of Biology with
Chemistry on their foundational level of inquiries, the
unsolved problems of Biology will be cross-referenced
with the ones of Chemistry and vice versa.
Topics like, why
some plants or animals are able to adapt to a wider range
of climatological conditions than others, will be placed
in our List of Most Wanted Solutions. Derivative topics,
such as why some living species are able to live longer
than others, shall be placed in our Auxiliary List of
Most Wanted Solutions.
The remaining
five (5) sections
1. The
RealDeal® Foundational
Inquiries;
2. The
RealDeal® Theoretical
Studies;
3. The
RealDeal® Discovery Reports;
4. The
RealDeal® Focus Line;
5. The
RealDeal® Historical Scrutinies;
and
which form the
so-called Core sections of our publication are designed
to cover a wide range of issues involving Natural
Sciences and Philosophy, and a brief description of those
sections related to Biology is described below.
[Additional information is provided in the HomePage
of each section (which you can reach from our Science's
FrontPage site by clicking on the corresponding
Icon-Button of each section located at the left side of
the respective title) as well as in the Biology part of
each section (which can be accessed from the
corresponding Navigational Bar of the respective section
located also in our Science's FrontPage.)]
1. Because
foundational inquiries in Biology are linked and
intertwined, as noted above, with those of Chemistry, all
foundational studies of Chemistry shall be posted also in
the Biology site, corresponding to
The RealDeal® Foundational Inquiries
section.
2. Studies of the
major topics of General (Evolutionary) Biology,
Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology shall be
presented in The RealDeal®
Theoretical Studies section. In addition to the
guidelines set up in our Publication Policy page with
respect to the style and form of presentation, these
studies need be written in a way, so to attract the
largest possible audience interested in the subject at
hand, in a non-technical language, with an "eye" towards
freshmen students, with one and only one goal in mind:
to lure
and attract as many young students as possible into
pursuing a career in Biology.
To accomplish all
this, the style and form of presentation, will be quite
different than anything else ever written on the subject
at hand because these studies, regardless of the
complexity of the subject involved will need to be
provocative --to provoke first and foremost the interest
in the subject itself. And second, you, the reader must
be introduced not only to the beauty and the complexity
of the subject involved, but also, and most importantly,
to the shortcomings of the theory or subject described.
These shortcomings, if properly implanted, will spring
into fresh ideas and approaches to the subject at
hand.
3. Notable
discoveries in Biology will be reported in our
RealDeal® Discovery Reports section, through a
process involving four (4) phases, as
follows,
i)
[?] The
Status Phase
Immediately, upon
learning of a discovery in Biology that appears to be
significant (in the sense that the said discovery appears
to confirm or upset a theory currently in use), we shall
report such a discovery in the following
manner:
a) If the discovery
is theoretical in nature, we shall first attempt to get a
non-technical version of it from the author(s). If that
attempt fails, we may still try to get a non-technical
version from other sources. If that attempt fails as
well, we will place it into a special category of reports
entitled The Unattainable Discovery Reports. If on
the other hand, the said theoretical discovery can be
presented in a non-technical language, it shall be placed
into a different category entitled The Probable
Discovery Reports.
b) If the discovery
is experimental or observational in nature, we shall
first attempt to get the details about the experiment in
a non-technical language together with the results that
it claims to prove from the author(s). If that attempt
fails, we may still try to get a non-technical version
from other sources. If that attempt fails as well, we
will place it into a special category of reports
entitled, as noted above, The Unattainable Discovery
Reports. If on the other hand, the said experimental
discovery can be presented into a non-technical language,
it shall be placed into the category entitled, as noted
above, The Probable Discovery Reports. Also if an
experimental discovery reported cannot be duplicated
elsewhere, and credible reports on this become available,
the said discovery reported will be placed at once under
the stated category of The Unattainable Discovery
Reports.
Only discoveries
from The Probable Discovery Reports will continue
to receive our attention. The Unattainable
discovery reports, at any time, may be converted into the
Probable category if the stated conditions are
met, but if this conversion does not take place within
one (1) year, they will be permanently removed from
our site.
ii)
[!] The
Scrutiny Phase
The discoveries
from The Probable Discovery Reports will enter,
after a 30-day period, into a second phase of their
existence, known as The Scrutiny Phase. This phase which
shall last one (1) year, and upon good reason can be
extended, will be the phase in which the veracity of a
reported discovery shall be meticulously investigated and
examined. If the challenges posed and accumulated appear
to be lethal or formidable to overcome, for a particular
reported discovery, the said discovery will be placed
into the Unattainable category (as discussed
above). If no serious challenges were able to be mounted
against the discovery in question, at the end of
one (1) year, the said discovery will get a
RealDeal Pass and will be placed into
The RealDeal Interim Discovery Reports
section.
iii)
[=]
The Defining Phase
The Interim
discoveries, after a 30-day period, will enter for 60
days, into what is called the Defining Phase. As a result
of the challenges received during the Scrutiny Phase, the
author(s) of the discovery may want to redefine and
perhaps further clarify their discovery, defining thus
even better the discovery in question.
iv)
[/\] The
Disposition Phase
With the Defining
Phase over, a reported discovery, will permanently enter
into the RealDeal "Hall Of Fame". A "Hall of Fame"
discovery shall always stay and be posted in our site.
To unseat a "Hall
of Fame" discovery, the process will involve the
accumulation of compelling evidence pointing away from
the discovery in question, as follows:
-For experimental
results, a proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" must exist
to establish the existence of fraud and/or
misrepresentation of data in support of a particular
research. Upon such proof, the said discovery reported
shall be removed from the "Hall of Fame" page and, shall
be placed permanently into The RealDeal "Hall Of
Shame" page.
-For theoretical
discoveries to be unseated, a theoretical proof which
annihilates and/or eliminates the old result(s) must
exist, or alternatively, a fundamental logical error in
the proof of the theory must be found to exist. In such a
situation, the said theoretical result will be removed
from our site, with no trace or reference to be found, as
if it were never published.
Finally, when an
experiment or observation contradicts an established
theoretical result, this, in itself, will not be able to
unseat the said contradicted theoretical result, but a
warning will be posted for the apparent conflict and
placed into a new category entitled The Unresolved
"Hall Of Fame" Discoveries. In all probability, the
apparent scientific conflict created will be posted in
our List (or Auxiliary List) of Most Wanted Solutions
section.
4. Science, as
anything else in life, to be able to flourish in a given
Society and Culture must be able to have the necessary
support. But what is actually "necessary" is not as
simple to answer as perhaps it may seem. Issues of this
sort affecting the complex relationships between Biology
(with its various Research Programs and Projects) and
Society will be explored from different viewpoints in our
section entitled The RealDeal
Focus Line. Also there, issues involving the
antagonism, real or imaginary, between Biology and
Religion (and other non-scientific beliefs and dogmas)
will be presented from various perspectives and point of
views.
5. Historical and
biographical studies in Biology shall be covered in our
RealDeal Historical Scrutinies section. The
central focus of these studies is to adhere as much as
possible to the Historical Truth and separate the myths
from the reality. This historic scrutiny is essential for
protecting and defending the Historical Truth related to
the History of Biology, a field not fully matured and
independent --as an academic field of inquiries and
research. These studies to be presented herein are
intended to act as academic historical filters which
should be able to set new standards of research into the
History of Science. It is because of all this, that the
historical material published here will be quite
different, both in its scope and form of
presentation.
With respect to our
two (2) Forum sections mentioned at the beginning of
this overview presentation, which are listed in our
FrontPage science site as the last two (2) sections,
we may want to mention here the following:
·
In The RealDeal® Forum Letters, we will
present selected letters received from our readers with
respect to the variety of issues that are being covered.
Issues which do not pertain to the subjects covered
herein will not be considered for publication in any form
or fashion, although we will read all mail received and,
when appropriate, we may respond in kind.
·
Finally, in The RealDeal® Forum Chat Rooms we
shall organize science events from a variety of topics
and issues for debates.
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