Introductory Science and Mathematics Education for 21st-Century Biologists

William Bialek, David Botstein

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

183 Scopus citations

Abstract

Galileo wrote that "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics"; his quantitative approach to understanding the natural world arguably marks the beginning of modern science. Nearly 400 years later, the fragmented teaching of science in our universities still leaves biology outside the quantitative and mathematical culture that has come to define the physical sciences and engineering. This strikes us as particularly inopportune at a time when opportunities for quantitative thinking about biological systems are exploding. We propose that a way out of this dilemma is a unified introductory science curriculum that fully incorporates mathematics and quantitative thinking.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)788-790
Number of pages3
JournalScience
Volume303
Issue number5659
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 6 2004

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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