Exploring the big question behind biology: how and why living things seem purposive, and what science can really show about it.

This concise, thoughtful sketch surveys the long search to understand life’s goals and the limits of experiment. It traces ideas from ancient thinkers to early modern biology, showing how two big questions—what life is for, and how we can know it—shape science. The author uses personal experience in studying development and heredity to explain why no single experiment can settle the core problem, and how philosophy and natural science meet in the study of nature.

What you’ll experience
- A clear view of how early debates about life’s purpose influenced modern biology.
- An introduction to key figures and ideas, from Kant to Lamarck, and from Roux to contemporary embryology.
- A discussion of how new methods in physiology, anatomy, and genetics reshape questions about evolution and heredity.
- Connections between sea surveys, experimental work, and the search for reliable evidence about how organisms change.

- A look at how science treats form and function, cause and effect, and the role of observation in building theory.

Ideal for readers who want a compact, accessible map of biology’s big questions and how scientists approach them today. This edition makes clear why the pursuit of understanding Nature begins with a problem—and why careful, iterative inquiry matters more than a single final pronouncement.

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