Liberal Arts and Sciences - University College Freiburg - Universität ...

16Major: Life SciencesThe Major in Life Sciences gives you thebasics you need to know about living organismsand their interaction with surroundingenvironments while at the sametime taking a broader perspective on thisfield of knowledge and its role in society,politics, and culture. The Major emphasizesquestions about the human being,but also includes the interaction of biologicaland technical systems. To this end,we consider the human being as a researchingsubject as well as the subjectof research.Throughout the program we tackle questionsof general interest using elementaryquestions of the Life Sciences: Are themind and the body separate entities orare they inextricably linked to eachother? How does consciousness emergefrom the large aggregation of cells formingthe human brain? Is a larger biologicalsystem more than the sum of itsparts? To what extent is behavior determinedby genes, and how much is it influencedby the environment? Is the extensionof our body with technical prosthesespart of the evolutionary process? Howdoes the interaction with technical systemsshape our way of life? Why are theLife Sciences so prominent in sciencefiction literature? What are the risks andbenefits of a society in which humansand robots interact?We approach such questions primarilyfrom the perspective of disciplines likeBiology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science,Medicine, and Biotechnology, butalso discuss them in a broader context.Starting from a single cell, a biochemicalsystem in itself, we deal with larger-scalesystems like cell clusters, bodily organsand the body and mind of the humanbeing as a whole. Studying these systemsbrings us to questions about howcognition and emotions are realized biologicallyand how biological systems canbe connected to technical ones, for examplefor medical purposes.The Major in Life Sciences gives you astrong research-oriented foundation inthe natural sciences and relates thisWebsite: www.ucf.uni-freiburg.de/go/major2