Elements of Biology: A Practical Text-Book Correlating Botany, Zoölogy, and Human Physiology

Excerpt from Elements of Biology: A Practical Text-Book Correlating Botany, Zoölogy, and Human PhysiologyThe plan of this book recognizes first-year biology as a science founded upon certain underlying and basic principles. These principles underlie not only biology, but also organized society. The culmination of such an elementary course is avowedly the understanding of man, and the principles which hold together such a course should be chiefly physiological. The functions of all living things, plant or animal, movement, irritability, nutrition, respiration, excretion, and reproduction; the interrelation of plants and animals and their economic relations, all these as they relate to man should enter into a course in elementary biology.But to make plain these physiological processes, difficult even for an advanced student of biology to comprehend, the simplest method of demonstration is necessary. Plant physiology, because of the ease with which simple demonstrations can be made, is more profitable ground for beginners than is the physiology of animals. The foods which animals use are manufactured and used by green plants; the action of the digestive enzymes, the principle of osmosis, and the subject of reproduction can better be first handled from the botanical aspect. The topics just mentioned introduced from the standpoint of the botanist gain much by repetition from the zoological angle. The principles of physiology, after being applied in experiment to plants and animals, emerge in final clarity when applied at the last to man, - the most complex of all living things.One of the most important factors in successful science teaching is repetition. In a recent address President Remsen of Johns Hopkins University said: -"The most important defect in the teaching of chemistry to-day is the absence of repetition. There are too many fleeting impressions. We cover too much ground. The student gets only a veneer."