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Aristotle is often named as the first zoologist or biologist because of his writings on animals. Although Aristotle's major intention in these books was to illustrate his ideas of how knowledge and understanding might advance, at least one modern biologist (C. Darwin) has recognized Aristotle's depth and breadth as being of surviving merit. Of greater surprise is the ongoing attention that his works continue to receive, including publications in contemporary scientific journals. This review identifies 38 peer-reviewed papers on various topics from Aristotle's biological writings that have been published during the last 50 years. These papers are described according to content (genetics, population biology, anatomy, brain, movement), specific creatures (fish, scorpions, elephants, insects, birds), publication outlet, distribution over the fifty year period surveyed, and visible trends in the topics studied. It is concluded that, in the highly-competitive field of peer-reviewed scientific publication and citation, Aristotle's biology continues to excite the interest of scientists and remains salient to modern science itself., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Historians and biologists identify the debate between mechanists and vitalists over the nature of life itself with the arguments of Driesch, Loeb, and other prominent voices. But what if the conversation was broader and the consequences deeper for the field? Following the suspicions of Joseph Needham in the 1930s and Francis Crick in the 1960s, we deployed tools of the digital humanities to an old problem in the history of biology. We analyzed over 31,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers and learned that bioexceptionalism participated in a robust discursive landscape throughout subfields of the life sciences, occupied even by otherwise unknown biologists., (© 2020. Springer Nature B.V.)

Over the last 25 years, reforms in undergraduate biology education have transformed the way biology is taught at many institutions of higher education. This has been fueled in part by a burgeoning discipline-based education research community, which has advocated for evidence-based instructional practices based on findings from research. This perspective will review some of the changes to undergraduate biology education that have gained or are currently gaining momentum, becoming increasingly common in undergraduate biology classrooms. However, there are still areas in need of improvement. Although more underrepresented minority students are enrolling in and graduating from biology programs than in the past, there is a need to understand the experiences and broaden participation of other underserved groups in biology and ensure biology classroom learning environments are inclusive. Additionally, although understanding biology relies on understanding concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics, students still rarely connect the concepts they learn from other STEM disciplines to biology. Integrating concepts and practices across the STEM disciplines will be critical for biology graduates as they tackle the biological problems of the twenty-first century.

The concept of causal specificity is drawing considerable attention from philosophers of biology. It became the rationale for rejecting (and occasionally, accepting) a thesis of causal parity of developmental factors. This literature assumes that attributing specificity to causal relations is at least in principle a straightforward (if not systematic) task. However, the parity debate in philosophy of biology seems to be stuck at a point where it is not the biological details that will help move forward. In this paper, I take a step back to reexamine the very idea of causal specificity and its intended role in the parity dispute in philosophy of biology. I contend that the idea of causal specificity across variations as currently discussed in the literature is irreducibly twofold in nature: it is about two independent components that are not mutually entailed. I show this to be the source of prior complications with the notion of specificity itself that ultimately affect the purposes for which it is often invoked, notably to settle the parity dispute., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Aristotle's theory of spontaneous generation offers many puzzles to those who wish to understand his theory both within the context of his biology and within the context of his more general philosophy of nature. In this paper, I approach the difficult and vague elements of Aristotle's account of spontaneous generation not as weaknesses, but as opportunities for an interesting glimpse into the thought of an early scientist struggling to reconcile evidence and theory. The paper has two goals: (1) to give as charitable and full an account as possible of what Aristotle's theory of spontaneous generation was, and to examine some of its consequences; and (2) to reflect on Aristotle as a scientist, and what his comments reveal about how he approached a difficult problem. In particular, I propose that the well-recognized problem of the incompatibility between Aristotle's concept of spontaneity and his theory of spontaneous generation presents an opportunity for insight into his scientific methodology when approaching ill-understood phenomena.

Darwin's Cirripedia project was an exacting exercise in systematics, as well as an encrypted study of evolution in action. Darwin had a long-standing interest and expertise in marine invertebrates and their sexual arrangements. The surprising and revealing sexual differentiation he would uncover amongst barnacles represented an important step in his understanding of the origins of sexual reproduction. But it would prove difficult to reconcile these findings with his later theorizing. Moreover, the road to discovery was hardly straightforward. Darwin was both helped and hindered by the tacit expectations generated by his transformist theorizing, and had to overcome culturally-embedded assumptions about gender and reproductive roles. Significant observational backtracking was required to correct several oversights and misapprehensions, none more so than those relating to the chronically misunderstood "Mr. Arthrobalanus." With careful attention to chronology, this paper highlights some curious and overlooked aspects of Darwin's epic project.

Biological specimens such as cells, tissues and biofluids (urine, blood) contain mixtures of many different biomolecules, all of which contribute to a Raman spectrum at any given point. The separation and identification of pure biochemical components remains one of the biggest challenges in Raman spectroscopy. Multivariate curve resolution, a matrix factorization method, is a powerful, yet flexible, method that can be used with constraints, such as non-negativity, to decompose a complex spectroscopic data matrix into a small number of physically meaningful pure spectral components along with their relative abundances. This paper reviews recent applications of multivariate curve resolution by alternating least squares analysis to Raman spectroscopic and imaging data obtained either in vivo or in vitro from biological and medical samples.

This paper explores Charles Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis through a popular and professional reception history. First published in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), pangenesis stated that inheritance can be explained by sub-cellular "gemmules" which aggregated in the sexual organs during intercourse. Pangenesis thereby accounted for the seemingly arbitrary absence and presence of traits in offspring while also clarifying some botanical and invertebrates' limb regeneration abilities. I argue that critics largely interpreted Variation as an extension of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), while pangenesis was an extension of natural selection. Contrary to claims that pangenesis was divorced from natural selection by its reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters, pangenesis's mid nineteenth-century reception suggests that Darwin's hypothesis responded directly to selection's critics. Using Variation's several editions, periodical reviews, and personal correspondence I assess pangenesis popularly, professionally, and biographically to better understand Variation's impact on 1860s and 70s British evolutionism and inheritance.

In this paper, we describe a project-based mathematical lab implemented in our Applied Mathematics in Biology course. The Leaky Bucket Lab allows students to parameterize and test Torricelli's law and develop and compare their own alternative models to describe the dynamics of water draining from perforated containers. In the context of this lab students build facility in a variety of applied biomathematical tools and gain confidence in applying these tools in data-driven environments. We survey analytic approaches developed by students to illustrate the creativity this encourages as well as prepare other instructors to scaffold the student learning experience. Pedagogical results based on classroom videography support the notion that the Biology-Applied Math Instructional Model, the teaching framework encompassing the lab, is effective in encouraging and maintaining high-level cognition among students. Research-based pedagogical approaches that support the lab are discussed.

Science, engineering and mathematics-related disciplines have relied heavily on a researcher's ability to visualize phenomena under study and being able to link and superimpose various abstract and concrete representations including visual, spatial, and temporal. The spatial representations are especially important in all branches of biology (in developmental biology time becomes an important dimension), where 3D and often 4D representations are crucial for understanding the phenomena. By the time biology students get to undergraduate education, they are supposed to have acquired visual-spatial thinking skills, yet it has been documented that very few undergraduates and a small percentage of graduate students have had a chance to develop these skills to a sufficient degree. The current paper discusses the literature that highlights the essence of visual-spatial thinking and the development of visual-spatial literacy, considers the application of the visual-spatial thinking to biology education, and proposes how modern technology can help to promote visual-spatial literacy and higher order thinking among undergraduate students of biology.

Agent-based modeling and simulation is a useful method to study biological phenomena in a wide range of fields, from molecular biology to ecology. Since there is currently no agreed-upon standard way to specify such models, it is not always easy to use published models. Also, since model descriptions are not usually given in mathematical terms, it is difficult to bring mathematical analysis tools to bear, so that models are typically studied through simulation. In order to address this issue, Grimm et al. proposed a protocol for model specification, the so-called ODD protocol, which provides a standard way to describe models. This paper proposes an addition to the ODD protocol which allows the description of an agent-based model as a dynamical system, which provides access to computational and theoretical tools for its analysis. The mathematical framework is that of algebraic models, that is, time-discrete dynamical systems with algebraic structure. It is shown by way of several examples how this mathematical specification can help with model analysis. This mathematical framework can also accommodate other model types such as Boolean networks and the more general logical models, as well as Petri nets.

In 1948, a dynamic junior member of the Johns Hopkins Biology Department, William McElroy, became the first director of the McCollum-Pratt Institute for the Investigation of Micronutrient Elements. The Institute was founded at the university to further studies into the practicalities of animal nutrition. Ultimately, however, the Institute reflected McElroy's vision that all biological problems, including nutrition, could be best investigated through basic biochemical and enzyme studies. The Institute quickly became a hub of biochemical research over the following decade, producing foundational work on metabolism and a respected series of symposia. In this paper, I argue that McElroy's biochemical vantage on biology also permeated the traditionally morphological and embryological Biology Department at Hopkins. Largely due to the activity of McElroy and the Institute, the faculty, course offerings, and research underwent a radical reorientation toward biochemistry and molecular biology in the 1950s, even while maintaining a commitment to developmental biology. While the history of postwar biology is often told as the ascendancy of the "new" biology over "traditional" biology, the case of McElroy and the McCollum-Pratt Institute affords an opportunity for historical examination of biochemical and molecular science as a lens through which all branches of biology at an institution were reconceived and unified.

Investigations of cell and tissue structure and function using innovative methods and approaches have again yielded numerous exciting findings in recent months and have added important data to current knowledge, inspiring new ideas and hypotheses in various fields of modern life sciences. Topics and contents of comprehensive expert reviews covering different aspects in methodological advances, cell biology, tissue function and morphology, and novel findings reported in original papers are summarized in the present review.

This paper focuses on a running dispute between Werner Callebaut's naturalistic view and Filip Kolen and Gertrudis Van de Vijver's transcendentalist view on the nature of philosophy of biology and the relation of this discipline to biological sciences. It is argued that, despite differences in opinion, both positions agree that philosophy of biology's ultimate goal is to 'move' biology or at least be 'meaningful' to it. In order to make this goal clear and effective, more is needed than a polarizing debate which hardly touches upon biology. Therefore, a redirection in discussion is suggested towards a reflection on the possibilities of incorporating philosophy in interdisciplinary research, and on finding concrete research questions which are of interest both to the philosopher and to the biologist.

The primary purpose of this paper is to argue that biologists should stop citing Karl Popper on what a genuinely scientific theory is. Various ways in which biologists cite Popper on this matter are surveyed, including the use of Popper to settle debates on methodology in phylogenetic systematics. It is then argued that the received view on Popper--namely, that a genuinely scientific theory is an empirically falsifiable one--is seriously mistaken, that Popper's real view was that genuinely scientific theories have the form of statements of laws of nature. It is then argued that biology arguably has no genuine laws of its own. In place of Popperian falsifiability, it is suggested that a cluster class epistemic values approach (which subsumes empirical falsifiability) is the best solution to the demarcation problem between genuine science and pseudo- or non-science.

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual practice of biological inquiry.

This paper analyses the actual meaning of a transcendental philosophy of biology, and does so by exploring and actualising the epistemological and metaphysical value of Kant's viewpoint on living systems. It finds inspiration in the Kantian idea of living systems intrinsically resisting objectification, but critically departs from Kant's philosophical solution in as far as it is based in a subjectivist dogmatism. It attempts to overcome this dogmatism, on the one hand by explicitly taking into account the conditions of possibility at the side of the subject, and on the other hand by embedding both the living and the knowing system into an ontology of complexly organized dynamical systems. This paper fits into the transcendental perspective in acknowledging the need to analyse the conditions of knowability, prior to the contents of what is known. But it also contributes to an expansion and an actualisation of the issue of transcendentality itself by considering the conditions of possibility at the side of the object as intrinsically linked to the conditions of possibility at the side of the subject.

This paper defends the position that the supposed gap between biological altruism and psychological altruism is not nearly as wide as some scholars (e.g., Elliott Sober) insist. Crucial to this defense is the use of James Mark Baldwin's concepts of "organic selection"and "social heredity" to assist in revealing that the gap between biological and psychological altruism is more of a small lacuna. Specifically, this paper argues that ontogenetic behavioral adjustments, which are crucial to individual survival and reproduction, are also crucial to species survival. In particular, it is argued that human psychological altruism is produced and maintained by various sorts of mimicry and self-reflection in the aid of both individual and species survival. The upshot of this analysis is that it is possible to offer an account of psychological altruism that is closely tethered to biological altruism without reducing entirely the former to the latter.

The rise of applied biology was one of the most striking feature of the biological sciences in the early 20th century. Strongly oriented toward agriculture, this was closely associated with the growth of a number of disciplines, notably, entomology and mycology. This period also saw a market expansion of the English University system, and biology departments in the newly inaugurated civic universities took an early and leading role in the development of applied biology through their support of Economic Biology. This sought explicitly to promote the application of biological knowledge to economically important problems and especially to agriculture. The impact of Economic Biology was felt most strongly within Zoology, where it became synonymous with entomology. The transience of Economic Biology belies its significance, for example, in providing a means for the expansion of biology at the civic universities. More broadly, it opened up new research and employment opportunities within the life sciences. In late Edwardian Britain, newly available state funds for agriculturally relevant biological disciplines transformed the life sciences. This paper examines the impact of these funds - mobilized either under the 1909 Development Act, or under the auspices of colonial interests - on Economic Biology and the institutionalization of applied biology. The rise and fall of Economic Biology casts new light on the way in which institutional and political alignments profoundly shaped the development of British biology.

This paper compares and contrasts three groups that conducted biological research at Yale University during overlapping periods between 1910 and 1970. Yale University proved important as a site for this research. The leaders of these groups were Ross Granville Harrison, Grace E. Pickford, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson, and their members included both graduate students and more experienced scientists. All produced innovative research, including the opening of new subfields in embryology, endocrinology and ecology respectively, over a long period of time. Harrison's is shown to have been a classic research school; Pickford's and Hutchinson's were not. Pickford's group was successful in spite of her lack of department or institutional position or power. Hutchinson and his graduate and post-graduate students were extremely productive but in diverse areas of ecology. His group did not have one focused area of research or use one set of research tools. The paper concludes that new models for research groups are needed, especially for those, like Hutchinson's, that included much field research.

This paper clarifies the chronology surrounding the population geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky's 1937 book, Genetics and the Origin of Species. Most historians assume (a) Dobzhansky's book began as a series of 'Jesup lectures,' sponsored by the Department of Zoology at Columbia University in 1936, and (b) before these lectures were given, Dobzhansky knew he would produce a volume for the Columbia Biological Series (CBS). Archival evidence forces a rejection of both assumptions. Dobzhansky's 1936 Columbia lectures were not Jesup lectures. The book he intended to write from his lectures began as a stand-alone text in evolutionary genetics; the CBS had been defunct since 1910. In May 1937 - seven months after Dobzhansky's Columbia lectures - Leslie Dunn lobbied Columbia University to revive the CBS and the Jesup lecture series. He then quietly back dated, naming Dobzhansky a Jesup lecturer and co-opting his book manuscript as the first volume in the revived CBS. A detailed chronology of this 1936-1937 period is provided. This relocates the CBS and Jesup revivals within the narrow context of zoology at Columbia University. These helped Dunn and colleagues define cutting edges and define themselves as managers and promoters of those edges.

Academia is subdivided into separate disciplines, most of which are quite discrete. In this review I trace the interactions between two of these disciplines: biology and philosophy of biology. I concentrate on those topics that have the most extensive biological content: function, species, systematics, selection, reduction and development. In the final section of this paper I touch briefly on those issues that biologists and philosophers have addressed that do not have much in the way of biological content.

This paper seeks to reinterpret the life and work of J.B.S. Haldane by focusing on an illuminating but largely ignored essay he published in 1927, "The Last Judgment" - the sequel to his better known work, Daedalus (1924). This astonishing essay expresses a vision of the human future over the next 40,000.000 years, one that revises and updates Wellsian futurism with the long implications of the "new biology" for human destiny. That vision served as a kind of lifelong credo, one that infused and informed his diverse scientific work, political activities, and popular writing, and that gave unity and coherence to his remarkable career.

Catastrophe Theory was developed in an attempt to provide a form of Mathematics particularly apt for applications in the biological sciences. It was claimed that while it could be applied in the more conventional "physical" way, it could also be applied in a new "metaphysical" way, derived from the Structuralism of Saussure in Linguistics and Lévi-Strauss in Anthropology. Since those early beginnings there have been many attempts to apply Catastrophe Theory to Biology, but these hopes cannot be said to have been fully realised. This paper will document and classify the work that has been done. It will be argued that, like other applied Mathematics, applied Catastrophe Theory works best where the underlying laws are securely known and precisely quantified, requiring those same guarantees as does any other branch of Mathematics when it confronts a real-life situation.

According to the situation of recent biology it seems to be necessary to continue the theorectical foundation of this science, and especially a foundation beyond physics and metaphysics. The preconditions of such a project are given with the problems of causality, natural law and induction. The discussion of these subjects in modern philosophy of science did not bring useful results, for philosophy of science itself is orientated by physics. On the other hand even the history of these problems in biology shows that the acceptance of physical or philosophical viewpoints leads to invincible difficulties. Therefore, in this paper, I have tried to demonstrate the necessity of analyzing these basic problems in a new way. The conditions and circumstances of a biological phenomenon have a special kind of multidimensional relationship, so that they cannot be reduced to simple linear systems of cause and effect. The fact that biological systems have a lot of retroactive effects make the description of their causality much more complicated than it is in physics. So the natural law in biology is characterized by its relativity concerning the parameters which create the special dependence of a biological phenomenon's constituent parts.