Biology/Citable Version

The word "Biology" is formed by combining the Greek βίος (bios), meaning 'life', and λόγος (logos), meaning 'study of'. "Biology" in its modern use was probably introduced independently by both Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur, 1802) and by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Hydrogéologie, 1802). Although the word "biology" is sometimes said to have been coined in 1800 by Karl Friedrich Burdach, it appears in the title of Volume 3 of Michael Christoph Hanov's Philosophiae naturalis sive physicae dogmaticae: Geologia, biologia, phytologia generalis et dendrologia, published in 1766.

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collage image needed: fabulous shot of earth from space, juxtaposed to images of plants, animals, and people

Biology is the science of life. Biologists study all aspects of living things, including each of the many life forms on earth and the dynamic processes in them that enable life. Those processes include the harnessing of energy, the synthesis of the materials that make up the body, the healing of injuries, and the reproduction of the entire organism, among many other activities.

Living organisms have been of interest to all peoples throughout history, and, accordingly, the roots of biology go back to earliest mankind. Curiosity about the physical beings of people, plants, and animals runs deep in every human society. How is it that these bodies change; develop, grow, and age? What is it that underlies the divide between inanimate objects and the living entities in the world? Some of those questions stem from our desire to control life processes, and to exploit natural resources. Pursuit of the answers has led to an understanding of organisms that has steadily improved our standard of living through the ages. But questions also come from a desire to understand nature rather than to control it, and the very core of that desire is sparked by a commonly felt need to understand the human condition and the nature of the world.

But, not all natural lore is biology, no matter how accurate or useful. Biology incorporate an understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry and other sciences, along with adherence to the scientific method, to their study of living things. Still, all human interaction with nature eventually adds to the biologists' understanding, whether the original ideas came from evidence in the laboratory or the stud book of the horseman, from the notebook of the ecologist or the drawings of the hunter .

The Scope of Biology

How did life begin? What features separate something that is alive from something that is not alive?. The biologist uses science to try to answer these fundamental questions, questions that also concern the philosopher, the rabbi, the iman, and the priest - as well as every person who retains a sense of wonder. Whether scientific thinking about these issues is compatable with religious beliefs is itself contentious. Some great thinkers, such as the physicist Albert Einstein, have found no real conflict between the varying teachings of science and religion, but consider Divinity and the Natural Universe to be one and the same (see Albert Einstein for detailed discussion with references).

Many independent scientific fields make up Biology, but all are related. Natural History (the study of individual species like white-tailed deer, sugar maple trees, box jellyfish and timber wolves Image needed?) was one of the first areas of biology to develop. In natural history, whole organisms are studied in an attempt to make sense of the order of Nature. When the natural histories of plants and animals are considered in a context of how each affects the other and their environment, then the biologist's focus is on ecology. Some fields of biology focus on the natural history of living organisms and their interactions within a certain realm of the earth, as in marine biology; others focus on particular aspects of the bodies of living organisms, like their structure (Anatomy) and function (Physiology). Studies of animals form the field of Zoology, whereas the study of plants is called Botany. Medicine and the Health Sciences apply biology to understanding disease and to improving health. Many of the academic disciplines that make up biology are listed at the bottom of this article along with a brief description. Further information about each is provided through links to other articles within Citizendium.

The development of biology

• Roots of Biology in the Ancient World

The natural history of plants and animals was the first area of biology to develop.

• Early Biology : The Establishment of the Scientific Method

A workable classification of living things was made practical by Linneas using a form of systematic nomenclature he invented. This gives a unique name to each kind of plant and animal, and organizes all of them into a classification scheme that stresses similarities of physical features.

• First Glimpses of the Microscopic World

The features of plants and animals have often been understood on an entirely different levels with technological advances that provided new means for examining them. For example, the simple microscope in the hands of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in the Seventeenth Century, revealed details of structure in the bodies of organisms that had never before been even suspected. Not only was the structure of flesh and plants seen at a new level of detail, but new types of organisms were also revealed: micro-organisms that could not be detected with the naked eye. Further developments led to the modern compound microscope by the end of the 19th century, with much higher resolution, and eventually the late 20th century electron microscopes (Image needed?).

Like all important technological advances in biology, the microsocope led to new ideas about living things. The concept that tissues were composed of cells was clarified, thefield of microbiology was born, and the ground was prepared for the germ theory of disease, an idea that helped bring the traditional practice of western medicine (sometimes called allopathy) into the field of health science and modern medicine.

Classification

Classification is the province of the disciplines of systematics and taxonomy.

Main topics and discoveries

• Evolution
• Common descent
• Homeostasis

Major discoveries in biology include:

• Cell theory
• Germ theory of disease
• Genetics
• Evolution
• DNA

Disciplines within biology

• Anatomy: The study of structure
• Biochemistry: The chemistry of living things is a field of both biology and chemistry
• Cell Biology: The study of the components of cells
• Genetics: The study of the inheritance of characteristics, genes and DNA
• Marine Biology: The study of life in the seas and oceans
• Behavior:
• Biodiversity:
• Biogeography:
• Botany:
• Developmental biology:
• Ecology:
• Ethology:
• Evolutionary biology:
• Molecular biology:
• Physiology:
• Zoology:

References

Citations

Further reading

Selected external links

The following links have been reviewed and are recommended because, at the time of their inclusion, they provided accurate information and portals to additional excellent web resources. Many other excellent links have been omitted through no fault of their own.

Plain and technical language

• The American Institute of Biological Sciences (ABIBS) Virtual Library is free to all visitors
• The Bio-Web reviews and gives access to information in Cell and Molecular Biology, includes "news" in plain language
• Cell and Molecular Biology Online is a resource for professionals that includes links and some information for all
• Kimball's Biology Pages represent an online biology textbook