Scientists and science
material annotated 
Bacon | Bohr | Bronowski | Capra | Carson | Darwin | Einstein | Feynman | Galileo | Gell-Mann | Hawking | Hooke | Kaku | Lavoisier | Lewontin | Margulis | Newton | Snow | Steingraber | Tattersall | Thomas | Watson | Wilson
Atoms | Bohr | Electromagnetism | Light quanta | Quantum biology | Quantum scale | Quantum Universe | Radiation is
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5 scientific revolutions, what are they and why did they change what we think about the world? Today's understanding of the compatible relations among mathematics, physics, chemistry, earth sciences and biology has been a 450 year process of trial and errors.
5 kingdoms of life (or 6?) what is the relation among plants, bacteria, fungus, monera, animals, and the phylum of archaeozoans? People long taught that there were either plants or animals, two kingdoms of life, until the discoveries of genetics, cellular biology, and curious minds revealed –based on DNA– that there are five or even six kingdoms of life on Planet Earth.
Animals & plants as sentinels of the planet's productivity. The world of creatures from the seas' depths to the summits of the Himalayas are indicators of rapidly changing conditions that provide us clues to human, planetary and cosmic impacts on the Earth.
Bison grazes Jaguar predator coccolithophore flamingo eats shrimp
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Abrupt Climate Change, Since 1958 the amount of carbon dioxide vapor-gas in the atmosphere has grown steadily higher, laden with heavy carbon isotopes from industrial production, transportation and exhaust from high energy combustion the added heat trapping gases in the air and ocean are causing changes that plants and animals are ill-equipped to adapt to because events shift so quickly.
Analysis The page examines the meaning the word and how it applies to all learning, but particularly scientific findings.
Aspects and Character of scientific findings: This site answers the question what makes scientific findings different from other forms of knowledge.
Bachelard's paradox about rationalism and realism (experimentation). This site examines the argument that he proposed; science rests on two contradictory assumptions and yet the method works to reveal errors in what we know about astronomy, gravity, light, or natural selection.
Bacon's idols (four idols) define for this thinker, what were the prevailing and persistent obstacles to humans understanding? In the seventeenth century Sir Francis Bacon challenged the prevailing superstitions of his world even among the educated classes of privileged elites and in so doing classified the errors we all make when thinking as the equivalent of worshipping four idols: the cave, the clan, the market-place and ....
Bainbridge on Sex, why there is more to gender than just genes and X or Y chromosomes. Why is it that Aristotle thought women were defective men, contrary to what we know now that all humans begin fetal life as women before genes, proteins and conditioning alter that state of origin?
Bias A closer examination of a habit that taints all of human discourse, the tendency to think we know when ignorance is what we are asserting.
biocoenose This is a discussion of the meaning of a European term for a biotic community of all living things in a particular ecological system special to a precise place or interconnected area.Biological diversity examined in some detail
Biosphere A guide to Vaclav Smil's text discussing the living parts of the Planet Earth.
Bronowski on Science and human values A guide to Jacob Bronowski's influential and arguably essential book about the necessity of keeping rational values in line with humane ends.
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Century of the Gene, E. F. Keller on genetics and a search for meaning. While the term gene and the study of hereditary traits is called genetics after this word which is a corruption of pangenes, the author reveals how one word hides a good deal of meaning besides more of what we do not know when people argue about genes.
Changes in life sciences, and index. In addition to Darwin the body of knowledge we associate with organisms, molecular biology, physiology and understanding of RNA all have contributed to a revolution in what we know of life's origins, behavior, and complexity.
Changes in science Thomas Kuhn over sixty years ago challenged assumptions abut how scientific ideas completely shift over time in his book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Changes in society So many influences have altered social institutions–that is the behavior of people in groups–since the industrial and automated electronic revolutions that this is an index to a hundred subjects dealing with those shifts in attitudes and behavior over time.
Changes in technology or applied science Arnold Pacey, physicist and historian of technology, argues the shift from hand work to machine tooled manufacture has left us less aware than our ancestors of the tacit knowledge that comes from "handling" objects and artifacts.
Chelonian Institute, Oviedo, FL. A place created by Dr. Peter Pritchard where turtle study and conservation are practiced locally and globally; one of the three largest turtle skeleton collections in the world.
Climate Change, its here and its queer and we better get used to it,
in the sense which J. B. S. Haldane suggested:
"Nature is not only queerer than we think, but it is queerer than we can think."
This is a guide to entries on the site dealing with global warming and subjects relating to climate change.
Coastal conservation and design A program for interagency cooperation to restore parts of America's shoreline adversely affected by growth, pollution, and neglect.
Coast's, a question of change: how population, density, consumption are driving habitat destruction and fragmentation
Collapse by Jared Diamond A summary of his arguments of how civilization should act when facing catastrophic impacts on their populations.
Complexity. The integrative science of understanding adaptive responses to altered conditions by living creatures based on an understanding of responses in non-living systems.
Complexity theory and Murray Gell-Mann theoretical physicist at Cal. Tech. theorized about quarks in protons and neutrons
Conservation is not preservation Often confused these two approaches to environmental protection have different origins, emphasis and intent.
Conservation redefined The synopsis of a recent Scientific American article calling for placing people and their subsistence patterns at the core of a new approach to an older idea of conservation of natural resources.
Cosmos, levels of organization The order we have described in the macrocosm to the microcosm fits into nested levels of magnitude and this attempts to explain those relations among a dozen or more orders of magnitude.
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Darwin's mind, changes in his thinking. Called a shift in his worldview by Ernst Mayr, this examines what made him change from the old natural history to the new ideas based on natural selection.
Darwin's Origin of Species, Some notes on the entire work; 1859 edition.
Darwin's relation to ecology: what are the associations he made to the organic and anorganic conditions of existence?
Darwin, index to pages about natural selection and his findings of our common origins, biogeographical similarities, animal behavior, plant diversity, and evolution.
Defining diversity, simply and what is biological diversity examined in some detail, especially the varieties of diversity measures.
dialectical argument there is a step before a scientific argument and that is a dispute favoring and not favoring a thesis
dialectical methods by using a scientific argument in the dialectical sense one is using a pro versus con method to determine how logical, reasonable, and verifiable any new theory, concept or law is with respect to describing material changes in our world.
Dimensions, every room we know of has three extensions of space: 1) length, 2) width or breadth, & 3) height or depth.
Diversity and climate changes There are numerous, widespread and serious consequences for plants and their dependent animals.
Double Helix, James Watson's story about how the four of them took steps toward a discovery of a lifetime, the structure of the DNA molecule.
Dominant Animal The Ehrlich's look at all the ways humans have come to exploit and also misunderstand their environment, society and physical conditions, since emerging from our ancient African ancestral line of primates.
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Ecology and chemical contamination, The author explores the many ways toxic materials affect the human condition through air, soil, and water contamination.
ecological laws Three basic assumptions that ecologists always make and are reinforced by field conditions.
ecological findings [Ten] Called the ten commandments of ecology -these are the extensions of the three fundamental laws of ecology.
Einstein's thoughts about research and society; how to conduct scientific investigation and the application of findings to human situations.
Energy from an ecological perspective
Estuarine sciences, development of the ways to understand the two-way flow of water in river mouths,
Evolution was Charles Darwin's Revolution
Exaptation What is that quality exhibited by both inventions and evolution that may depend on the receptivity of the users or the conditions in which something is applied to solve a problem?
feedback negative (corrective) The basis of all learning and a fundamental characteristic of the physical world.
Feynman, Richard: The Meaning of it All, A basic introduction to all you ever considered sloppy thinking and reliable discoveries in a thin analysis of why people believe what hey due despite the wonders of the universe all around us.
Focus of scientific study, Foci that characterize science: measurement, reliable information, accuracy, doubt, tested, reinforced, modified, discarded, critical, skeptical.
Fusion What happens under intense pressure of stars to the lighter (less massive) atomic elements?
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Gell-Mann, Murray: The Quark and the Jaguar A book on the meaning of complexity as a useful conceptual means of bridging the gaps among the physical, chemical, and biological sciences.
Gene, Century of the Gene, Evelyn Fox Keller's critical examination of the imprecision still stalking the understanding of what genes are, how genes work, and what genes exactly do.
Genetics This is an introductory page that explains the crucial role of the biology of inheritance with links to many others on the same subject of heredity.
Genome unseen by Wyatt Gibbs, who explains some very surprising activities at the DNA and RNA level of protein manipulation that we are only beginning to understand. The hidden aspects of hereditary changes made apparent.
geography An overview of what the studies of topography, landscape and culture actually reveal in terms of our relation to the Earth.
Geological time The history of the previous life forms on Earth hidden in the rocks and revealed in a long table of how the crucial aspects of geography, biology, and climate all changed simultaneously to reveal billions of years of every shifting conditions of existence.
Geology and geography index links to related concepts in Earth Sciences.
Global Warming This is a brief definition of a much larger subject and has links to the numerous (66) pages on this site dealing with climate and abrupt climate change. For recent findings, see New ideas
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The remaining entries are not yet annotated!
Kaku, Michio
Keller, The Century of the Gene
Kuhn, Thomas on scientific revolutions
Richard Lewontin on genetics
Life Sciences, changes in
Living Downstream, ecology and cancer
machine, four parts of
Malthus, on population
Margulis on our symbiotic planet
Matter, organization of
Margulis, Lynn Symbiosis in Ecosystems
Method, scientific pyramid of how we know
method, scientific; commentary on.
methods, a long discussion of
Milestones of science –graduate class– opening
Museums to virtually visit.
NatureNeurosis and Human Growth, Karen Horney
Sir Isaac Newton
Newtonian and Darwinian Revolutions
Nuclear power, described
Numeracy, being numerate.
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Ockham's Razor, the importance of avoiding pleonasm in your writing!
Odum,
Eugene on natural resources as assets
On the Origin of Species (1859) – notes on the book
Pyramids to visualize science concepts
Real versus ideal in knowing reality
Research Guide to other web sites for useful information for writing assignments.
Research institute for wildlife, turtles and world conservation.
Research; reliable sources on the internet for you to use.
rules of ecology; simply stated
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Scale and levels of organization in nature.
Science is defined and analyzed here as one of several linked pages. Science is not however technology, though they are related.
Science and disease, related ideas on order and disorder.
Science Method, some surprising admissions from contemporary practitioners.
Charles Percy Snow's the Two Cultures Essay.
Symbiotic Planet, Lynn Margulis
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taste, A Taste for Country Aldo Leopold's descriptions of how to understand the complexity of the land organism and its inherent ecological qualities of recycling and energy transfer.
Ian Tattersall, on science and how we humans & monkeys are so close as to be largely similar in our DNA, inheritance, not to mention behavioral responses to the world.
Technology is discussed and examined as the means
we have to solve the apparent difference between an existing and a desired
state of affairs or conditions.
Technology is defined here as the application
of knowledge to human affairs.
Thinking like a Mountain, Aldo Leopold on wildlife ecology
Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell
Tools are the items used to identify and understand the power of technology and the techniques we use. Some synonyms for tools are: apparatus, devices, gadgets, implements, instruments, machinery, materials, robots.
The Triple Helix, by Richard Lewontin
Uncertainty in science, a valued role to play.
Unity of Nature, view of the natural sciences
Unseen Genome, by Wyatt Gibbs
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James Watson's, The Double Helix
Wetlands, international importance & value of
Who was Darwin the person?
Words; the importance of accurate expression and the appropriate choice of terms is examined here. Eight of the most important terms for my courses are defined here, as well as on other pages.
Worldviews, complex associations of personal and social constructions of how the world works compared to its actual conditions of existence.
World, the; as a scientific problem.
Writing: Writing about Science as a means to measure your critical thinking.
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