Department of Biology & Biochemistry, Unit Catalogue 2008/09 |
BB30108 Life, environment & people |
| Credits: 6 |
| Level: Honours |
| Semester: 2 |
| Assessment: CW 67%, ES 33% |
| Requisites: |
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Aims & Learning Objectives: To explore the varied ways in which people and other life forms interact with one another and their surroundings as dynamic, responsive systems to produce the conditions for environmental and cultural stability and change. To use this exploration as a basis for examining topical issues concerned with the way we perceive and manage our relationship with the living world, and how this relationship affects our 'quality of life'. After taking this course the student should be able to: * understand the fundamental nature and complex outcome of dynamic, interactive processes affecting environmental and cultural stability and change over scales ranging from microscopic to global. * use this understanding to think critically about the origins and underlying assumptions of various kinds of knowledge, value-judgements and assertions about the environment and environmental impacts. * communicate this understanding in a variety of scientific and social contexts. Content: Lectures on pattern, process and relationship in living systems, including concepts of differentiation and integration, self and non-self, symbiosis and competition, degeneration and decomposition, chaos and complexity, life history strategies, succession. Discussion groups on topical issues, e.g. 'the relevance of biodiversity', 'biotechnology and bioengineering', 'food and food webs', 'sustainability and vitality', 'changing cultures', 'human needs and values'. |