ABSTRACT
Why a biology of learning? Mainly because an understanding of the nature of human learning is best perceived from as many different viewpoints as possible. The biological sciences provide one of these viewpoints, and recent work from this discipline indicates that learning is human nature and it is human nature to learn. A second reason is that much of the academic litera- ture exploring the nature of human learning draws on disciplines that include the social sciences, psychology and the humanities. Therefore, although educationalists have a plethora of literature about learning drawn from these areas, they have little drawn from the biological sciences. This chapter, together with the other science-based ones in this book, attempts to plug this gap.
