ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out a key thinking in the biological sciences and social sciences to offer the reader a foundation in the ideas, approaches and findings that work within the book. Its approach is about developing a way of thinking about and researching education based on the underpinning premise that we are biosocial. The chapter sets out the fundamentals from biosciences and social sciences that are worked with and starts to identify what happens when we think about these not just as open for integration but as fundamentally intra-acting. The structures of the economy, society and institutions are understood in social sciences to exert significant influence on what is meaningful, possible and impossible within a given society. The chapter discusses the techniques that are rapidly advancing our understanding of metabolic mechanisms. Likewise, social science research provides substantial insight into the social dynamics that influence education and learning. Yet, these insights remain largely in-discipline and potential transdisciplinary understandings remain underexplored.
