Questions tagged [biology]

For questions relating to the study of life and life-related processes

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How sensitive was the frog galvanoscope?

Frog galvanoscope is an instrument for detecting small voltages, made of a frog's leg. Wikipedia notes: The instrument is capable of detecting extremely small voltages, and could far surpass other ...
jpa's user avatar
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Semmelweis had no explanation?

That Semmelweis noticed a huge drop in mortality among new mothers simply by having doctors wash their hands between patients. But according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis he did ...
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Who was the first to understand that there is not a net flux of energy between Sun and Earth, but of entropy?

According to Penrose's Cycles of Time, he starts by reminding the usefulness of the second law of thermodynamics and how it applies to everyday life. In particular, how the net energy of Earth is a ...
Mauricio's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
294 views

Why did systems theory never gain popularity?

Briefly from wikipedia, Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has ...
tryst with freedom's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
200 views

Were scientific discoveries ever inspired by art?

We can often see art that is influenced by science, be it in paintings, music, novels or movies. But has any idea from the arts ever influenced a scientist to come up with a new discovery or idea?
Brain Stroke Patient's user avatar
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When Kervran suggested biological transmutation of elements did anyone argue this

My understanding is that Kervran fed chickens a diet lacking in calcium and yet eggs were produced with calcium in their shells. Two related questions: Could not the calcium have been from the bones ...
releseabe's user avatar
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Did Kary Mullis actually invent PCR as he claimed?

I remember learning that the inventor of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was Kary Mullis, who was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993. I recently learned that there is some controversy about ...
Mr X's user avatar
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When was the first electron microscope image of a roundish or geometrical (e.g. icospiked virus particle produced?

The first TEM image of a human coronavirus was in 1967 but both images of virus particles and Transmission Electron Microscopy were around long before that. What molecule's models might Linus ...
uhoh's user avatar
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What is Aristotle's view on Plant generation?

I am new to Aristotle study, In Book 1 of Generation of Aristotle give his view on plant generation, In Book 1.1 Aristotle writes " But all those creatures which do not move, as the Testacea and ...
Abhishek Yadav's user avatar
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What date is assigned to Hippocratic treatises "On Generation" and "On the Nature of the Child"?

On the nature of the Child is quoted by Galen in his Book "On Semen". I want to know what date is given to these two books, especially "On Generation"?
Abhishek Yadav's user avatar
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What is "female seed" in Galen's work?

On the last page (page 84) of Anthony Preus's paper$^\star$ on Galen's criticism of Aristotle's Conception Theory, the author writes that Galen discussing the second book of "On Seed", which ...
Abhishek Yadav's user avatar
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What alternative theories of learning were there before classical and operant conditioning?

The two main forms of (animal) learning are operant conditioning and classical conditioning, both established only in the 20th century. However, before they were established, surely there have been ...
MaudPieTheRocktorate's user avatar
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Books on history of biochemistry

I am looking for books on the history of biochemistry. Searching online there are some short articles that can be found, which just mention a few highlights, but I haven't really found more ...
AlexM's user avatar
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When were cephalopods assigned to the taxonomic phylum Mollusca?

I am fascinated to read about the evolution of cephalopod intelligence while I understand why cephalopods are mollusks (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod), but I cannot easily find when ...
James Goetz's user avatar
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131 views

On what grounds did Crick find the central dogma of biology?

In 1957 Crick installed the central dogma of biology: The Central Dogma. This states that once "information" has passed into protein it cannot get out again. In more detail, the transfer of ...
Deschele Schilder's user avatar
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What were Gregor Mendel's and Darwin's views on evolution?

Mendel's laws (like the laws of segregation or inheritance) became known to a wider publis decades after he discovered these laws. He assumed trait particles in operation that were responible for his ...
Deschele Schilder's user avatar
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1 answer
147 views

"Stone of Folly" based on maybe finding and removing brain tumors?

There is a famous painting by Hieronymus Bosch in which someone is being operated on to remove the "stone of folly". Detail from Hieronymus Bosch's painting titled "Extraction of the ...
releseabe's user avatar
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History of Mathematical Biology - Resource Recommendations

Biology nowadays is filled with mathematics. Indeed, the field of mathematical biology is huge, and shows no sign of decay. But the mathematisation of biology is, to my knowledge, a recent phenomenon -...
Rain's user avatar
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What were the original techniques used to study CAM (Crassulacean acid metabolism) plants? Who first employed these methods?

In biology and botany, there is extensive research concerning the nature of different plant types and their methods of respiration and nutrient intake. How were CAM (Crassulacean Acid Metabolism) ...
Nachiket Kulkarni's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Who identified the four basic types of animal tissue?

It is stated in innumerous introductory histology texts that there are four basic types of tissue - epithelial, connective, muscular, and nervous. I have never come across one that provides a ...
Catan97's user avatar
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What was considered Evolutionary Science or Biology proper in 1880-1890 in the US?

I have a question that is more related to the history of evolutionary biology rather than the science itself, namely I am interested in knowing what might have been considered the 'orthodoxy' of the ...
user42582's user avatar
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Natura non facit saltus (nature does not make jumps), who said that?

The sentence is Latin for nature doesn't make jumps. It refers to the fact that, in most physical processes, quantities vary continuously. The principle was used by Leibniz, Kant and Darwin among ...
lcv's user avatar
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1 answer
181 views

How did Jenner and his contemporaries understand vaccination before germ theory of disease?

Edward Jenner was a British doctor in the 18th century who in 1798 developed "vaccination," that is exposing humans to cow pox in order to prevent them from acquiring small pox. Vaccination was ...
seeker_after_truth's user avatar
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1 answer
672 views

Why did Linnaeus equate the phoenix, the mythical bird, with Phoenix, a palm genus?

I've been reading about the "paradoxa" section of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, where he debunk some of the more far fetched ideas about animals. Wikipedia includes this translation of what ...
Jetpack's user avatar
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610 views

When did the idea of thoughts occuring in the human head originate?

The early reference to the brain is found in Edwin Smith Papyrus The Edwin Smith Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian medical treatise written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded ...
hanugm's user avatar
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1 answer
361 views

Did Darwin say that the human menstrual cycle length was influenced by the tides?

According to this article from the BBC's Science Focus Charles Darwin thought that the 28-day human menstrual cycle was evidence that our ancestors lived on the seashore and needed to ...
Josh Friedlander's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
254 views

What did Kaspar contribute to the gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy?

I've read on KEI website that in the early 2000s Dr Martine Barkats, from France, successfuly treated mice with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) with an AAV9 viral vector; and that Dr Brian Kaspar, an ...
Hinko Pih Pih's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
143 views

Was Lord Kelvin at any point a proponent of vitalism?

Vitalism is the notion now discredited as pseudoscientific that there is some fundamental cleavage between living and non-living matter. This blog post contains some quotes that suggest Lord Kelvin ...
Martin C.'s user avatar
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1 answer
332 views

When and why was the symbol $w$ introduced for biological fitness?

$w$ the visually similar $\omega$ are often used to represent biological fitness in population genetics models. (Sometimes $W$ is used for absolute fitness, and $w$ for relative fitness.) These ...
Mars's user avatar
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2 answers
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What did scientists think was the function of breathing before the discovery of atmospheric gases?

Before we knew about gases in the atmosphere, what did scientists think was the function of breathing?
Ronald Lavine's user avatar
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1 answer
396 views

How did Quetelet discover that the body mass is proportional to the squared height?

The Body Mass Index (BMI) compares body masses on the assumption they scale with height squared, not cubed, an example of allometry. BMI is due to Lambert Quetelet. Why did he settle on this power law?...
J.G.'s user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
375 views

Who coined the term "immune system"?

Who coined the term "immune system"? The OED lists the following as its earliest example of the term "immune system": 1943 Science 30 Apr. 406/1Complement..is removed by the addition of an ...
Geremia's user avatar
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Coverage of a topic by scientific research through time

I'm interesting of how scientific research covers a specific topic in a time. Scientific field: biology, cellulosic ethanol production Like: ...
Evgeniy's user avatar
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7 votes
3 answers
288 views

Why didn't Mendel's experiments draw attention until the 20th century?

In The Gene: An Intimate History, author concludes the Mendel's pea experiments publication by these words: Mendel himself requested forty reprints, which he mailed, heavily annotated, to many ...
Failed Scientist's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
243 views

What were the early uses of differential equations for modeling chemical reactions?

What are some of the original examples of uses of differential equations for modeling and analyzing chemical reactions, particularly those relevant to biochemistry, involving proteins and enzymes? ...
user7496's user avatar
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14 votes
6 answers
697 views

Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?

Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research? Science fiction here means fiction that tries to explain things in the world rather than speculate about the future or unexplorable ...
rus9384's user avatar
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9 votes
4 answers
3k views

When did people realize that the eye was a lens?

All in the title: When did scientists realize that our eye functions like a lens/magnifying glass?
EigenDavid's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
482 views

Who helped Watson and Crick discover DNA?

I remember learning in school that Watson and Crick were attributed with discovering DNA, but also that there was a woman who helped a lot with the experiments who is rarely mentioned. Who is this ...
Pro Q's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
377 views

Was it a major cultural event when Van Leeuwenhoek discovered unseen animals under the microscope?

In the 17e century van Leeuwenhoek discovered with his microscope new kind of animals and cells. How was this discovery of van Leeuwenhoek received by the ordinary people when there seemed to be more ...
Marijn 's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
155 views

Who used "Tabellenstatistik" as a derogatory term in the history of biogeography?

I recently read the book "The secular ark" by Janet Browne on the history of plant geographical studies. In the chapter "A Science of Patterns", a subsection entitled "Tabellenstatistik" is included, ...
openmedi's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
206 views

How was Mendel's work rediscovered after being forgotten for 45 years?

According to Melanie Mitchell's book, Complexity: A Guided Tour [PDF], Mendel's model [...] was published in a rather obscure journal and was not appreciated as being of great importance until 1900, ...
Ooker's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
98 views

Has Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle's "Géographie botanique raisonné" ever been translated into German or English?

Alphones Pyramus de Candolle (1806-1893), the son of Augustin-Pyrame de Candolle (1778-1841), has been an important figure (as was his father) in the development of plant geography. The younger ...
openmedi's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
260 views

Where and how did scientists of the 18th and 19th century learn foreign languages?

I'm always amazed by the the apparent amount of foreign languages that scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries seem to have possessed. With the end of Latin as the main scholarly language, ...
openmedi's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
62 views

How important were reprints of scientific articles in scientific practice and communications before the copier, the computer and the internet?

Reprints of articles from scientific journals seem to have been an important part of scientific practice before the copying machine and the internet. Authors of articles were given a number of those ...
openmedi's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
451 views

Who first suggested, contra the central dogma, that "junk" DNA may perform epigenetic functions?

There were in last several years papers in Science regarding DNA that does not code for any protein ("junk" DNA) as having epigenetic aspects, namely, switching on and off other genes and thus ...
Gottfried William's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
174 views

What insight of Watson and Crick was missed by Franklin?

Their papers were published on the same issue of Nature back to back. Moreover, helix was also mentioned in Franklin's paper. So, what important insight or contribution of Watson and Crick was missed ...
J.Bates's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
105 views

Francis Crick and the usefulness of "genes" as compared to molecular biochemistry

In lecture 12 of Professor John R. Searle's U.C. Berkeley class, "Philosophy of Mind", he remarks [18m22s]: We no longer talk mysteriously about how heredity works. We can actually identify ...
user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
150 views

Most known teachers of specific branch of Science

After acquainting myself with the works of Richard Feynman in Physics: " The Feynman Lectures on Physics" and partially with the works of Donald Knuth in Programming: "The Art of Computer Programming",...
Ziezi's user avatar
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0 answers
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Raymond Cattell and History of Personality Traits Prior 1947

I find that papers reference Raymond Cattell suggesting 16 or 22, etc, traits, by factor analysis (basically regression), including all five of the modern reproducible traits (openness to experience, ...
Gottfried William's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
44 views

Why was brood parasitism known about in the middle ages?

The Wikipedia article on Cuckold indicates that the biological phenomenon of brood parasitism was known in the middle ages. (I suspect it may have been known in other cultures as well, but I can't say ...
Andrew Grimm's user avatar