Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2021

Published In

Mother Pelican

Abstract

Biological science and the larger society interact with each other. Biologists tell stories--stories such as fertilization, body development, and evolution--using the narrative structures given to them by the larger society. These stories have to be consistent with the scientific data; but what data are collected is also a social judgement. The stories that biologists have told have often emphasized competition and have often marginalized cooperative efforts. New research has shown that these competitive stories offer a very incomplete version of what is happening in our bodies, and that mutual cooperation is a major part of how the body develops and evolves. Understanding the body is key to understanding how parts integrate into wholes and provide new narratives of who we are and what is considered normative in our society.

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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This work is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

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