Posted by Sergei Atamas on April 21, 1999 at 15:00:40:
In Reply to: subscribing posted by Mark H. Welch on April 19, 1999 at 06:06:28:
Dear Mark,
Welcome to the Heraclitean Biology Group. We are not a newsgroup in a strict meaning of the word, but have the web forum for duscussions.
It would be great to have you as a member of our group, because many of us in HBG believe that teaching biology in most cases goes throuth the "instructive" path, when students are tought that biology follows the same strict deterministic laws as chemistry and physics. In fact, such a view is predominant among biologists in general.
We emphasize that in biology, just as in physics and chemistry, when one moves down to some degree of a "micro-" viewing a system, stochastic events become predominant, although their overall reflection on a "macro-" scale looks as a deterministic event. Just as in chemistry and physics, understanding of stochastic nature of the "micro-" scale helps in better understanding of "macro-" events.
We would love to have your students to go deeper in this aspect of biology and invite them to ask questions here on the forum. I think many HBG members would be happy to help some of your students with related projects. We also appreciate all suggestions for improving our web site.
Let me know if you want your name listed on our "People" page.
S