UNIT EIGHT — REVIEW • WHAT ARE THE USES OF BIOLOGY? 



Far back in the earliest stages of man's existence, human beings must have 

 had some sort of knowledge about life, about living things, about the human 

 body and its workings. These ideas about plants and animals, about pain and 

 hunger, about plagues and famines, together made up the "biology" of any 

 particular tribe or family, of any particular period or region. These ideas 

 guided the practices by which man lived. While other animals learn from 

 experience, human beings appear to be the only ones that invent words and 

 signs which enable them to carry experiences from one to another, as from 

 parents to children. Men also invent imaginary beings to help them explain 

 how things work. These inventions or ideas may be in the form of ghosts and 

 goblins or in the form of natural forces or "principles". They help in many 

 ways to carry on the needed work. But often they keep us from making the 

 best use of experiences and resources. They may actually interfere with learn- 

 ing from further experience. 



When ancient peoples began to keep records of their cattle and crops, their 

 priests had already begun to write down their secret wisdom. They recorded 

 good and evil plants and animals, correct ways of ensuring good harvests or 

 increasing livestock, secrets about curing various sicknesses or about over- 

 coming a drought. We should probably rate most of this lore as not very 

 reliable, perhaps even as superstitious. At least, we cannot understand how 

 the color of an ox used in plowing, for example, can influence the growth and 

 ripening of the grain; or how the symbols painted over a barn-door can en- 

 sure the health of the cattle. Primitive biology often mixed religion and 

 morals with practical rules and prohibitions; but it served. 



Modern biology, as a branch of scientific study, has made rather sharp 

 separations between what is and what we wish or fear. It has attempted to 

 analyze the actual workings of all kinds of plants and animals, both in their 

 outside relations and in the inner processes of organs and tissues. These studies 

 furnish much more dependable understandings of our own body and the 

 conditions essential to its healthy growth and development than we ever had 

 in the past. As a result, we have completely revolutionized our ideas about 

 keeping human beings well and supplying them with what they need. 



By developing scientific methods of dealing with problems, we learned 

 rather suddenly to overcome some of the oldest of the obstacles to the enjoy- 

 ment of life. The causes of many sicknesses are definitely known. Promising 

 research on the causes of others is under way. Bacteria, protozoa and viruses 

 could not have been known in earlier periods, because they cannot be re- 

 vealed without our modern instruments and techniques. As invisible but 

 unquestionably powerful agents, they could in the past be reasonably con- 

 sidered as "spirits". 



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