''Biology Today'' is a college-level
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
textbook
A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textboo ...
that went through three editions in 1972, 1975, and 1980. The first edition, published by
Communications Research Machines, Inc. (CRM) and written by a small editorial team and large set of prominent "contributing consultants", is notable for its lavish illustrations and its
humanistic
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humani ...
approach. It was significantly rewritten by
David L. Kirk and others for the second and third editions, which were issued by
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
.
First edition
The 1972 first edition of ''Biology Today'' had no principal author but was written by fifty-four contributing consultants, many of whom were leading figures in biology (and seven of whom were
Nobel laureates). Visually, it features numerous artistic interpretations of biological topics as well as striking diagrams and photographs. Many of these images, such as a surreal depiction of the injection of
heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brow ...
, a series of diagrams showing how to use a
contraceptive diaphragm, and a painting titled ''Noah's Ark'' depicting copulating humans and animals, proved controversial and led to few adoptions of the textbook. By 1981, a reviewer of a later, much-changed edition wrote that the original "might now be considered a 'classic' for it is hardly likely that such a fine humanistic biology textbook will be published again. (If you have a copy, hold on to it.)"
In the preface, John H. Painter, Jr.—leader of the editorial team and credited as the book's publisher—explains that "science is a peculiarly human endeavor that seeks to newer and better solutions to the problems plaguing us all"; that modern biological sciences are rooted in work of physicists who turned to biology after World War II; that understanding life at the molecular level allows science to find "solutions to problems of immediate concern", rather than earlier biological studies that "floated disconnectedly above the physical and chemical substrate of life"; and that information processing is at the core of many biological advances.
The introduction is an illustrated essay, "What Is Life?", by
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt ( hu, nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre; September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) was a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with fi ...
—a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and, as the essay's biographical tag explains, a protester against "the irrational pursuit of war and politics that characterizes our Western culture" as well as an advocate of using technology "to create a psychologically and socially progressive world where humanistic values are paramount". The essay explains Szent-Györgyi's outlook on the fundamental problems of biology, the relationship between biological and physical sciences, and reasons for pursuing biology. Szent-Györgyi concludes that "To express the marvels of nature in the language of science is one of man's noblest endeavors. I no reason to expect the completion of that task within the near future."
Biology Today Film Series
CRM produced a series of films associated with ''Biology Today'': ''The Origin of Life and Evolution'', ''The Cell: A Functioning Structure'' (in two parts), and ''Muscle''. Like the textbook, the films were visually innovative, featuring extensive animation to depict complex aspects of biology.
According to a review in ''
The American Biology Teacher
The National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) is an incorporated association of biology educators in the United States. It was initially founded in response to the poor understanding of biology and the decline in the teaching of the subject ...
'', ''The Origin of Life and Evolution'' used "creative cinematography to recreate current views" and won awards at "two major education film festivals". While the reviewer considered it the best of its kind (in 1977) and praised it both for educational value and captivating "visual imagery", he noted that it was too sophisticated for the full range of its intended audiences and that "basic knowledge of DNA is a prerequisite for gaining maximum usefulness from the film."
Contributing consultants
*
Preston Adams
*
Thomas Peter Bennett
*
Konrad E. Bloch
Konrad Emil Bloch (; 21 January 1912 – 15 October 2000) was a German-American biochemist. Bloch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964 (joint with Feodor Lynen) for discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the ...
*
John Tyler Bonner
John Tyler Bonner (May 12, 1920 – February 7, 2019) was an American biologist who was a professor in the Ecology and evolutionary biology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He was a pioneer in the use of ce ...
*
Susan Bryant
*
Frank Macfarlane Burnet
Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, (3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985), usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist known for his contributions to immunology. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune ...
*
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature tech ...
*
Elizabeth G. Cutter
*
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical science, physical scientist ...
*
Joyce A. F. Diener
*
John E. Dowling
*
John C. Eccles
*
Leland N. Edmunds, Jr.
*
J. S. Finlayson
*
William Fishbein
*
Paul Gebhard
Paul Henry Gebhard. Jr. (July 3, 1917 – July 9, 2015) was an American anthropologist and sexologist. Born in Rocky Ford, Colorado, he earned a BS and a PhD from Harvard in 1940 and 1947, respectively. Between the years 1946 and 1956, Gebhard ...
*
Terrell H. Hamilton
*
Peter H. Hartline
*
J. Woodland Hastings
*
Jonathan Hodge
Jonathan Philip Hodge (26 January 1941 – 7 July 2019) was a British composer who wrote more than 2,000 jingles for TV and radio, including the Shake n' Vac tune.
Life and career
Hodge was born in London in 1941.
Jonathan wrote the scores ...
*John Holland
*
Yashuo Hotta
*
Tom D. Humphreys II
*
Daniel H. Janzen
Daniel Hunt Janzen (born January 18, 1939 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American evolutionary ecologist, and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura ...
*
William A. Jensen
*
Robert W. Kistner
*
Hans Adolf Krebs
Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS (, ; 25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-born British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that ex ...
*
Lee H. Kronenberg
*
Richard C. Lewontin
Richard Charles Lewontin (March 29, 1929 – July 4, 2021) was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, h ...
*
Robert D. Lisk
*
William F. Loomis, Jr.
*
Vincent T. Marchesi
*
Peter Marler
Peter Robert Marler ForMemRS (February 24, 1928 – July 5, 2014) was a British-born American ethologist and zoosemiotician known for his research on animal sign communication and the science of bird song. A 1964 Guggenheim Fellow, he was emeri ...
*
Donald M. Maynard
*
James L. McGaugh
*
Stanley L. Miller
*
James V. Neel
James Van Gundia Neel (March 22, 1915 – February 1, 2000) was an American human genetics, geneticist who played a key role in the development of human genetics as a field of research in the United States. He made important contributions to the ...
*
David M. Phillips
*
David M. Prescott
*
Eugene Rabinowitch
Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973) was a Russian-born American biophysicist who is known for his work in photosynthesis and nuclear energy. He was a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' ...
*
Roberts Rugh
*
Howard A. Schneiderman
*
Michael Soulé
Michael may refer to:
People
* Michael (given name), a given name
* Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael
Given name "Michael"
* Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and ...
*
Paul S. G. Stein
*
Payson R. Stevens
*
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt ( hu, nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre; September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) was a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with fi ...
*
J. Herbert Taylor
*
Kenneth V. Thimann
*
Jared Tinklenberg
*
Gordon M. Tomkins
*
Harold C. Urey
Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the d ...
*
James D. Watson
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...
*
J. S. Weiner
*
Robert H. Whittaker
Second and third editions
The second and third editions (published in 1975 and 1980 by CRM/Random and Random House alone, respectively) were significantly rewritten by Washington University biologist David L. Kirk and others. Kirk wrote fifteen chapters of the second edition and co-wrote five more.
[Preface, ''Biology Today'' (second edition)]
." Botany ''online'' - The Internet Hypertextbook. Accessed 15 May 2009. With the second edition, the controversial material from the original was removed, and the list of contributing consultants was smaller.
The third edition was very different from the first. It had, for the first time, a principal author credited (David L. Kirk) and had a long list of consultants (not "contributing consultants" as in the earlier editions). The third edition had just 31 chapters grouped into six sections (there were 45 chapters in 8 sections in the original), and rather than a humanistic approach for a broad college audience, it employed what Kirk described as "a somewhat more rigorous approach than many competing textbooks". A reviewer judged it "well-written, pedogogically sound, and, generally, scientifically accurate", but lacking the stylistic flair (and the seven Nobel Prize-winning contributors) of the original.
Notes and references
{{reflist
External links
Psychedelic '72 Textbook- images from the first edition
Biology textbooks