An organismic biologist praises reawakening to the natural world
Photograph by William (Ned) Friedman We live in an age of ecosystems—of life threatened on a planetary scale by climate change—and of genomes—of life analyzed at the molecular level, unveiling our own evolutionary history and the processes that underlie all of biology. Powerful though these constructs are, if one’s views of biology, of life, are predominantly through the lenses of ecosystems and genomes, something has been lost. I am an organismic biologist—a plant morphologist to be more precise. That means that when I think of a “unit” of biology, I am thinking about single...
Source: harvardmagazine.com