Specialty Topics: Biology Across Disciplines

In this course, we will explore the applicability and relationship of biology to the arts, business, and psychology. First, we’ll discuss art as a foundational practice to biology and how biology as a science can explain how we interact with the arts, in particular, our experiences making and listening to music. Next, we will discuss the business of biology and how research is funded and the process of clinical trials and human subjects research. Then we will examine two topics at the interface of psychology and biology: (1) human development from conception to adulthood, and (2) how cognition influences how we make decisions about biological issues and best practices for evaluating biological evidence in light of what we know about how we use evidence to make decisions. We will close with a discussion of education and why evidence-based education is important for promoting overall science literacy.