[veddox]

Speaking as a biologist, it saddens me every time I hear somebody say that they dropped biology as soon as they could in high school, because they inevitably do so just before it starts to get interesting.

The problem is that biology is a subject where you need a lot of fundamental knowledge before you can start to understand how things actually work - simply because the systems involved are so complex and have so many interacting parts. You need to learn an awful lot of facts before you can start putting the puzzle pieces together to see the big picture. But once you do, the view is amazing!

As an aside, I lament that the author equates "biology" with "molecular biology". He completely ignores the wonders of ecology - the beauty of biodiversity, the marvel of trophic cascades, the intricacies of ecosystem functioning. In fact, I think the challenges he sees for molecular biology are heightened for ecology: what you learn of it in high school is often even drier, you need even more background knowledge to be able to see the big picture, and research is even more challenging because experiments can seldom be done in a lab. Yet, once you've dug your way into it, you get to see systems at work that span the globe, that are as complex as anything that happens in a cell, just more vibrant and tangible and alive.

[jeffreyrogers]

I don't think you need that much context if you start with an organ system. For example, I got interested in biology by learning about how the kidneys work. You can give a pretty handwavy explanation to get someone oriented and then go into more and more detail (for example about the structure of the nephron, the hormones involved, how filtration works at a molecular level, etc.)

The other organ systems are similar. Once you know about the organ systems development and genetics are well motivated and easier to pick up. And from there you have a pretty good scaffold from which to fill in the rest of human biology.