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Human beings obviously differ both in their aptitude for self-reflection and in their exercise of it. But perhaps most persons seriously engaged in doing anything find themselves reflecting sooner or later on just what it means to do it and how it ought to be done. This seems particularly true of those engaged in the various forms of the secondary activity of critical reflection that are typically institutionalized in our society today in the several fields or disciplines of the research university. In the case of most such persons, however, self-reflection on their own life-praxis as researchers in this or that field or discipline requires stepping outside of it. What it means to do biology and how it ought to be done are not questions that biology as a science even asks, much less seeks to answer. Biologists may certainly ask and try to answer them; and unless appearances deceive, most biologists, at one time or another, probably do so. But as and when they ask such questions, it is not as biologists that they ask them, nor do the findings of their science offer any particular help in answering them.

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