Inquiry Into Life

Basic biological concepts and processes with a human emphasis. From the unique delivery of biology content, to the time tested art program, to the complete integration of the text with technology, Dr. Sylvia Mader has formed a teaching system that will both motivate and enable your students to understand and appreciate the wonders of all areas of biology. Inquiry into Life, 14/e emphasizes the application of all areas of biology to knowledge of human concerns, what the students are able to relate to. This distinctive text was developed to stand apart from all other non-majors texts with a unique approach, unparalleled art, and a straightforward, succinct writing style that has been acclaimed by both users and reviewers. In the 14th edition, the authors have focused on the concept of inquiry and a studentËs inherent desire to learn. To do this, they integrated a tested, traditional learning system with modern digital and pedagogical approaches designed to stimulate and engage todayËs student.

Basic biological concepts and processes with a human emphasis. From the unique delivery of biology content, to the time tested art program, to the complete integration of the text with technology, Dr. Sylvia Mader has formed a teaching system that will both motivate and enable your students to understand and appreciate the wonders of all areas of biology. Inquiry into Life, 14/e emphasizes the application of all areas of biology to knowledge of human concerns, what the students are able to relate to. This distinctive text was developed to stand apart from all other non-majors texts with a unique approach, unparalleled art, and a straightforward, succinct writing style that has been acclaimed by both users and reviewers. In the 14th edition, the authors have focused on the concept of inquiry and a student’s inherent desire to learn. To do this, they integrated a tested, traditional learning system with modern digital and pedagogical approaches designed to stimulate and engage today’s student.

Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.

Inquiry into Life was originally developed to reach out to science-shy students. The text now represents one of the cornerstones of introductory biology education and was founded on the belief that teaching science from a human perspective, coupled with human applications, makes the material more relevant to the student. As scientists and educators, the authors are aware that scientific discovery is a dynamic process and the advances in digital publishing are allowing authors to update content on a regular basis.

“The discourse of our common life inclines towards despair. In my field of journalism, where we presume to write the first draft of history, we summon our deepest critical capacities for investigating what is inadequate, corrupt, catastrophic, and failing. The ‘news’ is defined as the extraordinary events of the day, but it is most often translated as the extraordinarily terrible events of the day. And in an immersive 24/7 news cycle, we internalize the deluge of bad news as the norm—the real truth of who we are and what we’re up against as a species. But my work has shown me that spiritual geniuses of the everyday are everywhere. They are in the margins and do not have publicists. They are below the radar, which is broken.” Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and National Humanities Medalist Krista Tippett has interviewed the most extraordinary voices examining the great questions of meaning for our time. The heart of her work on her national public radio program and podcast, On Being, has been to shine a light on people whose insights kindle in us a sense of wonder and courage. Scientists in a variety of fields; theologians from an array of faiths; poets, activists, and many others have all opened themselves up to Tippett's compassionate yet searching conversation. In Becoming Wise, Tippett distills the insights she has gleaned from this luminous conversation in its many dimensions into a coherent narrative journey, over time and from mind to mind. The book is a master class in living, curated by Tippett and accompanied by a delightfully ecumenical dream team of teaching faculty. The open questions and challenges of our time are intimate and civilizational all at once, Tippett says – definitions of when life begins and when death happens, of the meaning of community and family and identity, of our relationships to technology and through technology. The wisdom we seek emerges through the raw materials of the everyday. And the enduring question of what it means to be human has now become inextricable from the question of who we are to each other. This book offers a grounded and fiercely hopeful vision of humanity for this century – of personal growth but also renewed public life and human spiritual evolution. It insists on the possibility of a common life for this century marked by resilience and redemption, with beauty as a core moral value and civility and love as muscular practice. Krista Tippett's great gift, in her work and in Becoming Wise, is to avoid reductive simplifications but still find the golden threads that weave people and ideas together into a shimmering braid. One powerful common denominator of the lessons imparted to Tippett is the gift of presence, of the exhilaration of engagement with life for its own sake, not as a means to an end. But presence does not mean passivity or acceptance of the status quo. Indeed Tippett and her teachers are people whose work meets, and often drives, powerful forces of change alive in the world today. In the end, perhaps the greatest blessing conveyed by the lessons of spiritual genius Tippett harvests in Becoming Wise is the strength to meet the world where it really is, and then to make it better.

Learning is much more than reading a textbook. That's why the 10th edition of Inquiry into Life is integrated closely with an Online Learning Center where students and professors alike will benefit. The OLC provides animations, virtual labs, online quizzing, Power Point lecture outlines, and other tools that will help make teaching a little easier and learning a lot more fun. Inquiry into Life covers the whole field of basic biology, and emphasizes the application of this knowledge to human concerns. Along with this approach, concepts and principles are stressed, rather than detailed, high-level scientific data and terminology.