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| Biology deals with
the study of life and organisms. |
top: E. coli
bacteria and gazelle
bottom: Goliath beetle and tree fern |
Biology
Biology is the natural science that studies life and
living organisms, including their physical structure,
chemical processes, molecular interactions,
physiological mechanisms, development and evolution.
Despite the complexity of the science, certain unifying
concepts consolidate it into a single, coherent field.
Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life,
genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as
the engine that propels the creation and extinction of
species. Living organisms are open systems that survive
by transforming energy and decreasing their local
entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined
as homeostasis.
Sub-disciplines of biology are defined by the research
methods employed and the kind of system studied:
theoretical biology uses mathematical methods to
formulate quantitative models while experimental biology
performs empirical experiments to test the validity of
proposed theories and understand the mechanisms
underlying life and how it appeared and evolved from
non-living matter about 4 billion years ago through a
gradual increase in the complexity of the system. |
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People who study biology are called biologists. Biology
looks at how animals and other organisms behave and
work, and what they are like. Biology also studies how
organisms react with each other and the environment. It
has existed as a science for about 200 years, and was
preceded by natural history. Biology has many research
fields and branches. Like all sciences, biology uses the
scientific method. This means that biologists must be
able to show evidence for their ideas, and that other
biologists must be able to test the ideas for
themselves. |
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Biology attempts to answer questions such as: "What are
the characteristics of this living thing?" (comparative
anatomy); "How do the parts work?" (physiology); "How
should we group living things?" (classification,
taxonomy); "What does this living thing do?" (behaviour,
growth); "How does inheritance work? (genetics); "What
has been the history of life?" (palaeontology). How do
organisms relate to their environment? (ecology). All
modern biology is influenced by evolution, which answers
the question: "How has the living world come to be as it
is?" |
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Fields of biology |
- Anatomy
- Botany
- Biochemistry
- Biogeography
- Biophysics
- Cell biology
- Cytology
- Developmental biology
- Ecology
- Entomology
- Ethology
- Evolution / Evolutionary biology
- Embryology
- Genetics / Genomics
- Herpetology
- Histology
- Human biology / Anthropology /
Primatology
- Ichthyology
- Limnology
- Mammalogy
- Marine biology
- Microbiology / Bacteriology
- Molecular biology
- Mycology / Lichenology
- Ornithology
- Parasitology
- Palaeontology
- Phycology
- Phylogenetics
- Physiology
- Taxonomy
- Virology
- Zoology
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