TOK RESOURCE.ORG

AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE:
THE NATURAL SCIENCES 
BIOLOGICAL LANGUAGE DELIGHTS

Most TOK teachers around the world teach other subjects and have specialist training in various Area of Knowledge domains. The author of this website is a zoologist who taught IB biology (and ESS). This page is an unapologetic personal indulgence driven by an ongoing fascination for the exactitude of biological language.

The following class activities have been assigned to The Natural Sciences as an Area of Knowledge, but could have just as easily been placed in the Knowledge and Language Optional Theme. The four activities presented below complement the “hermetic, technical and obscure sentences only fully understandable by initiated specialists” in Encounter with Nature journal; as well as the linguist perspective in Figs from multiple viewpoints.

CLASS ACTIVITY I — MASTERS AND APPRENTICES

Begin by having students sit together in randomly assigned trios. For each group of three there will be a “master” and two “apprentices.” Provide each of the masters with a printed card containing these instructions.

1. Ask your apprentices to translate the following — Hippopotamus amphibious

2. Challenge your apprentices to spell —“diarrhea”

3. Play two games of Hangman with your apprentices. Use the following — “Coccyx” (6 letters) and “Epididymis” (10 letters)

4. Ask your apprentices to respond True or False? to the following assertion —“Hyperthermia is caused by prolonged exposures to very cold temperatures.”

5. Challenge apprentices to think in silence for 30 seconds, then write down the most confusing or annoying terminology they encountered when they were studying biology.

Tell the masters not to disclose the tasks in advance. All participants should have scratch paper and a writing instrument handy.

As soon as the class is settled and focused, unleash the activity. Remind students of the importance of working very quietly, especially when playing hangman, so as not to reveal spoilers to trios in close proximity. As soon as the first few groups are done invite students to reflect quietly in place on their experience. The open, generative question “What just happened?” will suffice. When all the groups have finished, ask each master to report back briefly, surfacing any interesting Question 5 responses.

CLASS ACTIVITY II —
NAVIGATING BIOLOGICAL VERNACULAR

The following content is best enjoyed by a focused, silent reading; followed by an informal lecture discussion. If the teacher is not a trained biologist so much the better. A naive persona can be adopted — deferring to any HL biologists in the class.

As the lecture discussion progresses; do not hesitate to relish the details. You may find yourselves: referring back to the “master and apprentice” activity; clarifying the critical importance of minute differences in the suffixes and prefixes; expressing genuine elation (or disdain) for the pickiness of the obscure plurals; or identifying locations in the body of the anatomical structures named after the discoverers in the namesake section. Compelling biological trivia may emerge like “hydrophobia” being the formal name for rabies!

ETYMOLOGICAL

A delightful and nerdy aspect of becoming a biologist is immersion in its highly specialized vocabulary, much of it rooted in Latin and Greek. The good news is that the meaning of many technical terms can be fully or partially worked out from first principles by referring to English and other contemporary European languages:
hydrophobic
nucleopore
semilunar valve
atrio-ventricular valve
medulla oblongata
photosynthesis
glycolysis

Some terms cannot be determined directly from English but are revealed in the Romance languages:
Renal artery (rein in French, riñón in Spanish)

Some spellings in US English drop the Greek spellings favored in the UK:
diarrhoea―diarrhea
fœtal―fetal
haemophilia―hemophilia

Familiarity with some common prefixes is essential:
Homo-, Hetero-, Iso-, Hyper-, Hypo-, Epi-, Endo-, Exo-

Here are two biologically important chemical suffixes:
-ose, -ase

ESOTERIC PLURAL FORMS 

Getting the singular and plural forms of scientific terms right is worth the effort and is a sign of mastery of the material. Latin has several familiar patterns:
nucleus―nuclei
crista―cristae
flagellum―flagella
genus―genera
testis―testes
mitochondrion―mitochondria
matrix―matrices

Sometimes plural and singular are the same:
species―species

Here is an important Greek pattern:
stoma―stomata
plasmodesma―plasmodesmata
chiasmsa―chiasmata

And, just for fun, here are some obscurities:
biceps―bicipites
coccyx―coccyges
clitoris―clitorides
octopus―octopodes*

*Octopuses is also an acceptable plural for octopus, but (because of a Greek, rather than Latin origin) not octopi.

CELEBRATED Namesakes

Many biological terms are a matter of historical convention, named after the discoverer:
Graffian follicle
Loop of Henle
Schwann cell
Fallopian tube
Sertoli cell
Calvin cycle and Krebs cycle (not Kreb’s)

Some terms named after obscure scientists evoke a strange mythological geography:
Node of Ranvier
Canal of Schlemm
Islets of Langerhans
Peyer’s patch
Circle of Willis
Bundle of His

ECCENTRICITIES 

On a whimsical note; some biological terms roll off the tongue, alliteratively or jarringly, but can be difficult to spell correctly:
Epididymis
Coccyx
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Biochemical nomenclature is lengthy but unambiguous. It can be broken down systematically. The following enzyme catalyzes the first stage of carbon dioxide fixation in the Calvin cycle portion of photosynthesis. It is considered to be the most abundant protein on Earth:

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase
RuBisCO

CLASS ACTIVITY III:
Thinking CRITICALLY about biological classification

IB biology students will be very familiar with the following convention for biological classification: 

Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom: Animalia 
Phylum: Chordata 
Class: Mammalia 
Order: Carnivora 
Family: Felidae 
Genus and species: Acinonyx jubatus (Cheetah)

Current taxonomic thinking (Wozencraft, 1993) places the 36 species of wild cat family—Felidae—into three sub-families: Pantherinae (the big cats that roar rather than purr), Acinonychinae (with its sole member the Cheetah that cannot retract its claws) and Felinae (the remaining smaller cats). 

Writing the scientific name of an organism correctly is a sure sign of a trained biologist. The Genus is always upper case; the species name is lowercase. The name must be italicized (underlined, if handwritten):

Homo sapiens
Hippopotamus amphibious
E. coli

GENERATIVE QUESTIONS

1. Why and how do biologists classify organisms?

2. Biologists say that the species level (represented by the Latinized scientific name) is the only taxonomic level that actually exists. All other taxa in the hierarchy are fiction. To what extent do you agree?

3. Why must we generalize? Could we think or speak or reason at all without simplifications or universals? 

4. When you say or hear the word “lion” do you have a single, perfect, archetypal, Platonic picture of a generic lion in your head? If so what exactly does it look like? Does having a picture of an ideal lion help or hinder learning new things about specific lions?

CLASS ACTIVITY IV:
SUPERIOR BIPEDS

This quick-fire activity is a full-class public reading of a selection from one of the author’s biologically-inflected graduation speeches. Print on paper, and cut out in advance, the separate adjectives (“highly cephalized,” “eukaryotic,” “multicellular”… etc.). Hand them out in correct order to the entire class standing in a single straight line. Double back in the correct order if necessary with a second adjective. Do a practice reading first. Insist on prompt flow, timing and full syllabic enunciation for the final rendition.

Finally, conclude the class exploration of biological language delights by inviting students to tackle the summative Knowledge Questions.

Summative KNOWLEDGE questionS

1. Is all this fuss about the details of biological language worthwhile, or is it just self-indulgent jargon? Does it help or get in the way of acquiring biological knowledge?

2. To what extent can the attributes mentioned in the superior bipeds speech inform our understanding of ourselves as knowing and thinking beings?

3. Do you ever find yourself (as David Bodlak, this website author’s beloved father-in-law, often would often say about himself) “using language like a squid uses its ink?”