ABSTRACT
Up until the final quarter of the twentieth century, biological research consisted of observing and making descriptions of the form of biological ‘objects‘ and their behavior or function in response to different environmental and genetic contexts. Initially, these ‘objects’ were individual plants or animals that were visible to the naked eye (biology), or groups of organisms and the way they interact with each other and the environment (population biology, ecology). Surgeons and botanists began to study the organs within animals and plants: their physical distribution/connectivity and their role in the organisms’ life (anatomy, physiology). Microscopy paved the way to study smaller objects (cell biology and microbiology). Then from the end of the nineteenth century, chemists took an increasing interest in the molecules found in living things (biochemistry), and these efforts were spurred on by the influx of physicists, especially after the Second World War, who developed the technologies to purify and investigate the structure and function of macromolecules and study the metabolic fate of radio-labeled biochemicals. However, four developments are driving biomedical research away from the descriptive to a more hypothesis-driven approach. These drivers will be examined in turn.
