Student
Guide for Topic 8: What is Life?
CLAR
102 - Inquiry in the Natural World – Spring 2003 -
Lapennas
1. Know what unique characteristics life
has that people have been trying to explain for a long
time
2. Know what general hypotheses about life
people came up with to explain these characteristics.
3. Know: the difference between
mechanistic and vitalistic explanations of life; why many
scientists did not accept early mechanistic explanations of life; and what
developments led later scientists to accept the mechanistic explanation of
life.
4. Know about: the cell theory; synthesis
of organic molecules; the fermentation controversy; cryptobiosis; spontaneous
generation; and how discoveries concerning each of these during the
19th century helped a mechanistic understanding of life replace other
explanations.
1. Trefil, J. and RM Hazen, The Sciences, 3rd ed, pp.
443-446; 468-482; 489-497.
2. Benington, J, What is Life? http://web.sbu.edu/physics/faculty/dimattio/Clare102/physics.dimattio-sp03.htm
1. What remarkable characteristics do
living things have that are not found in non-living matter? Which two of these are most
fundamental?
2. What invention made the discovery of
cells possible? Draw a simple
picture of a cell and its major parts.
What is/are the primary function(s) of each part?
3. What are “organic” molecules? How have our ideas about where they can
be synthesized changed over time?
4. What are the 4 main types of large
organic molecules in cells? What
is/are the primary function(s) of each?
5. What is “cryptobiosis”? Identify several
examples. What general conclusion
about life is supported by the phenomenon of cryptobiosis?
Day 3 (Monday, 17 March) reading
assignment:
Harry Collins and Trevor
Pinch, “The germs of dissent: Louis Pasteur and the origin of life,” from The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About
Science, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.
http://web.sbu.edu/physics/faculty/dimattio/Clare102/physics.dimattio-sp03.htm
1. Describe Pasteur’s evidence against spontaneous
generation.
2. Describe Pouchet’s evidence in favor of spontaneous
generation
3. What aspects of Pouchet’s experiments
did Pasteur challenge and why?
4. At the end of the chapter, Collins and
Pinch say that, “Pasteur was a great scientist but what he did bore little
resemblance to the ideal set out in modern texts of scientific method. It is
hard to see how he would have brought about the changes in our idea of the
nature of germs if he had been constrained by the sterile model of behavior
which counts, for many, as the model of scientific method.” What do they
mean by this? Give specific examples.