Society and Biology

Physical sciences and engineering is much sought after and it pervades society as a dominating discipline and time has come when biology will be sought after. The most fundamental questions of existence, about organisms and their evolution, challenges faced by nature can be answered by biology. Studying nature is a wander and with what precision man is created and looking at the diverse species that exists, blows the mind of the curious, how can the maker be so creative. It is in the creative act or process that life emerged and is still evolving Biological sciences studies life it gives us insight into the life’s function, processes, diversity, unity and integration. Life has evolved and this evolutionary process is an adaptive workout. Over a millions of years our earth got modified and developed an intelligence where it can support life. Today biology in the domain of molecular biology, behavioural biology, to medicine is in the look out to understand the mysteries of life. Studying biology is taking a deep peep in the wonderland of evolution and intelligent life processes. As we are wonder struck by the Kalidasa’s Shakuntala or by the marvel of Taj Mahal so is the wonder in the life processes. Reflect on the biodiversity, it is a textbook of evolutionary biological history and biological geography. Today progress is generally measured in technology and the concerns that is stark is environmental hazards, forest depletion, food and nutritional challenges, concerns on biotechnology, and host of health challenges. Biology strives to decode the challenges and find measures to effectively deal with them. Life as a whole evolved it is a mystery how it evolved to make it so perfect in its working. Life itself is so diverse and this diversity make it possible for all the species to live and thrive. Life is enduring and this endurance is possible of certain threads that is running across life processes. Unfortunately these threads are not visible and in these threads are called as cycles which I call it as life rhythms. The life rhythms are the very essence of life and biology gives us enough lessons of it through the study of ecology. Among all species man has emerges as most manipulative of life and these has become the concern. If a species is given power to change should the species do whatever and wherever he can lay his hand? A lot of destructive acts on the environment is seen as per David Ehrenfled “The massive, anthropogenic die-off of plant and animal species now occurring far exceeds the usual extinction rates that have prevailed throughout most of evolutionary history. It is estimated that extinction rates of taxonomically diverse groups of species from widely different environments were 100–1,000 times their pre-human levels. In 2000, the IUCN’s Red List of endangered species showed that 24 per cent of mammals were faced with extinction (Hilton-Taylor 2000), an extraordinary die-off even when compared with that of the late Pleistocene ice ages. During the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, when global trade and the global expansion of new technologies and exploitation of natural areas have been increasing rapidly, species losses have become comparable to those of the great extinctions of earlier geological epochs”.

It can be seen man the most manipulative of all species is seeking comforts and in the process disregarding the diversity of life. So one comforts is achieved at the cost of diverse range of species. And these species which are getting lost are also useful and beneficial to man and eventually man has to pay a price. Society is buying comforts without any concern from the rest of the habitat. Habitat destruction happens when mega projects encroach the forested regions with rich biodiversity. Biology contains the library of life and this library has set the very context of existence. Today’s society is challenging the context by becoming a consumer society.

Society and Biology