The Role of Theory in Advancing 21st Century Biology - Catalyzing Transformative Research (Paperback)

This study was initiated at the request of, and with the sponsorship of, the National Science Foundation. It was conceived as a new approach to a question that has been asked before: What is the future of biology? In 1989 the National Research Council released a report on this topic entitled Opportunities in Biology. Over 400 pages long and four years in the making, the report provided a detailed snapshot of the state of biology at that time. Eleven different panels detailed the opportunities awaiting the rapidly diversifying field of biology. Reading the report today, the excitement of that time is palpable. Section after section describes new technologies and promises new discoveries. Each section focuses on a different subdiscipline of biology.

This report takes a different approach by looking for commonalities across subdisciplines. The committee was charged with examining the role of concepts and theories in biology, including how that role might differ across various subdisciplines. One facet of that examination was to consider the role of the concepts and theories in driving scientific advances and to make recommendations about the best way to encourage creative, dynamic, and innovative research in biology. The charge was to focus on basic biology, not on biomedical applications.