Welcome to the Blyth Institute

NOTE - information about the recent Engineering and Metaphysics 2012 conference is available here.

The Blyth Institute is an educational nonprofit organization which researches the connections and relationships between the historical and logical aspects of biology.  The institute is named after Edward Blyth, a 19th century biologist whose works in this field remain influential today.

Carl Woese, professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois, wrote of what he viewed as the challenge of biology in the coming century.  He said,

Molecular biology's success over the last century has come solely from looking at certain ones of the problems biology poses (the gene and the nature of the cell) and looking at them from a purely reductionist point of view. It has produced an astounding harvest. The other problems,evolution and the nature of biological form, molecular biology chose to ignore, either failing outright to recognize them or dismissing them as inconsequential, as historical accidents, fundamentally inexplicable and irrelevant to our understanding of biology. Now, this should be cause for pause. (from A New Biology for a New Century)

The mission of The Blyth Institute is to re-envision how biology is done from the low levels to the high levels, and to discover the biological and ecological relationships in nature which were unavailable to the reductionist approaches of the last century.

To support our mission, The Blyth Institute engages in research, collaboration, and public awareness events.  Whether you are a scientist or an interested layperson, we hope you will partner with us in our goal to rediscover biology in the 21st century.