Exploring Different Ways of Knowing in the Area of Biology

Science is the attempt to understand, explain and predict the world[1]. People gain knowledge by any ways of thought guiding us what we can know and how we can make it. Every discipline has their self characteristics and methodologies to get access to scientific knowledge. For biology, what is worthwhile to say is that modern philosophy of biology has avoided the traditional research regarding life and non-life as possible as they can. Rather, biologists have examined the principles, theories to better understand scientific biology to help us know world and resolve problems[2].

From a philosophical perspective, one of the ways we have been trained to approach the biologist is an essential logic method called 'inductive inference 'or 'inductive reasoning ', which allows a possibility that when the premises are totally true, the conclusion might be false[1]. As a matter of fact, scientists usually use induction whenever they aim to move from limited data to a more general principle. Taking the safety of genetically modified (GM) maize for example, scientists tested GM maize among a great number of people, and nobody participating in this has come out any healthy problems, which lead to a perception that GM food is safety to humans. Nevertheless, strictly speaking, this is not truth. The inductive reasoning is not always reliable. In Europe, there are substantially controversies on the safety of GM food. A survey on about 1000 respondents per country in Europe and the United States during 1996-1997, showed that different histories of media courage, regulation system and adaptive of new food technologies lead to resistance to GM food in Europe [3]. This research reported the relative reasons affecting the attitude towards GM food in Europe, which provided a direction to alleviate pressure from genetically modified product for science, industry and government.

On the other hand, we could employ some different ways of knowing biology, such as deduction reasoning, which greatly challenge 'induction reasoning'. Deduction reasoning is a kind of reasoning that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true [1]. In other words, the premises of this inference incorporate the conclusion. For instance, all creatures own inherited phenomenon. People belong to creature. Hence, children are like their parents. In addition, the way of studying biology varies a lot from different cultures. In china, scientists are more likely to be holistic with approaching the entire field by causality, relative to westerns to be analytics by utilizing formal logic and categories [4]. Holism is to consider that all the properties together cannot be separated and explained by the elements alone, such as thinking of the whole ecosystem. Chinese focus on holism for social system's sake, because ancient China counterpart to Greece had a collective agency. Chinese thought of individual as a part of the