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BIOL 2310

History of Biology

0.5 credits · Undergraduate

Summer 2025

Topics

  • (3 modules)
  • The prehistory of biology
  • Ancient Greek and Roman science
  • Roman natural history
  • Medieval biology
  • Medieval biology in Europe
  • The Renaissance
  • (4 modules)
  • The ordering of the world in the 17th and 18th centuries
  • Approaching the Origin
  • Charles Darwin and the Origin
  • The mystery of heredity
  • Genes and identity
  • After the Modern Synthesis
  • Deducing DNA
  • Gene regulation
  • The development of ecology
  • Genes to genesis
  • The beginnings of recombinant DNA
  • Sequencing, cloning and ethics
  • Modern ecology

Readings

  • 1. A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology by Jim Endersby (2007) Harvard University Press
  • Cambridge, MA, ISBN 0-978-674-02713-8 (hardcover); 9780099471240 (paperback).
  • 2. Deep Things out of Darkness: A History of Natural History by John G.T. Anderson (2013) University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, ISBN 0-978-520-27376-4 (hardcover).
  • 3. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016) Scribner, New York, NY, ISBN 0-978-14767-3350-0 (hardcover).
Sources