Comparative Thinking in Biology

Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved of their being the products of various processes of heredity adaptation ancestry and so on. In their investigations then biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - ''comparative thinking'' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly comparative thinking is local: what we can do with knowledge of a lineage is limited by the evolutionary processes into which it fits. In light of this analysis the Element examines the experimental study of animal cognition and macroevolutionary investigation of the ''shape of life'' demonstrating the importance of comparative thinking in understanding both the power and limitations of biological knowledge.