...positive attitudes such as being open-minded and being willing to recognise alternative points of view (p. 4)

UNIT 1: CELL FUNCTION AND INHERITANCE (H)

 

Introduction

...Within the unit, there are many areas impinging on religious or moral sensitivities and these or other areas may also raise important ethical and legal questions. It is important to stress that the role of the biologist is to provide knowledge of these processes, on the basis of which individuals, families or societies may make informed and often crucial decisions.

UNIT 3: BEHAVIOUR, POPULATIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Introduction

...Although the unit considers only a few of the many influences on human behaviour at the individual and group level, it is hoped that this will stimulate in candidates a critical awareness of their own behaviour. Candidates should understand that this individual behaviour, which is dependent on the genome, has been modified by social interactions and environmental factors and that both of these, although constantly changing, will continue to affect their behaviour patterns in the future. (p. 27)

In relatively recent evolutionary times there has been an exponential increase in human brain capacity. It is the large size of the human brain which gives humans a unique place in the animal world. (p. 29)

c) Population growth and the environment

1 Population change

          i Human population growth

                     Pre-history of modern man.

 

Candidates should understand the concepts of population abundance and regulation as they apply to a non-human vertebrate. They should understand that human populations are also regulated but that carrying capacity has increased and has yet to reach a new level. Candidates should be aware of the main events in the cultural evolution of modern man and be able to compare this with extant examples of pre-industrial cultures. Special mention should be made of the importance for population growth of survival to reproductive age through improvements in child care and vaccination programmes to control childhood diseases. When examining other ways in which the normal constraints on population abundance could be circumvented, reference should be made to the effects that changes in cultural habits, such as curtailment of prolonged suckling of infants (which can postpone conception), and extended fertility, with increasing lifespan and early puberty, can have on population growth.