What is biology about? History, Importance, Biology Topics

What is biology about? History, Importance, Biology Topics

What is biology about?

Biology (whose name comes from the Greek: bíos, “life” and logía, “science, knowledge”) is one of the Natural Sciences, and its object of study includes the different forms and dynamics of life: its origin, the evolution, and the processes of living beings: nutrition, growth, reproduction and their various possible mechanisms of existence.

Thus, biology proposes the empirical study and limited to the scientific method of the foundations of life, wanting to find the norms that regulate it and the processes that determine its dynamics. That is why biologists are dedicated to studying the similarities and differences between species and ordering them into various “kingdoms” of classification, which are:

• Animal kingdom. Those heterotrophic beings are endowed with movement, which obtains energy through breathing.
• Vegetable kingdom. Those autotrophic and immobile beings, which generally obtain their energy from the use of sunlight (photosynthesis) or other chemical sources (chemosynthesis).
• Kingdom of the mushrooms. An intermediate step between animals and plants, they are heterotrophic and immobile beings, which take advantage of the organic matter available to feed themselves.
• Protist kingdom. The set of microscopic beings from which the three previous kingdoms come, with which they share cellular characteristics (eukaryogenesis, that is, cells with a nucleus ).
• Bacterial kingdom. They form the simplest group of unicellular life forms, together with archaea, being prokaryotic organisms (cells without a nucleus). They are the most abundant form of life on the planet.
• Kingdom of the archaea. With a different evolutionary history than bacteria, they are very simple and primitive prokaryotic unicellular organisms, but closer in metabolism and other functions to eukaryotes.

History of biology

The human being has always been intrigued by its origins and by what distinguished it from the other animals that populate the world. Naturalism and medical traditions date back to ancient times in ancient Egypt and Greece, although they were based on mystical or religious interpretations of reality.

The term “biology” comes from the 19th century, a consequence of the Scientific Revolutions and the Age of Reason, and is attributed to Karl Friedrich Burdach, although there are previous mentions. But that is when it arises as an independent and separate study of philosophy; not like in ancient times, when trying to get the truth through pure reasoning rather than experimentation.

The discovery of evolution and genetics, with the studies of Darwin and Mendel respectively, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, would lead biology to its modern stage and more similar to what we understand today.

Importance of biology

Biology is an important discipline because through it we can unveil the mysteries of life as we know it, including its origin (and our own) and the laws that underpin it. Thus, we will be able to understand what exactly life is and we will be able to look for it on other planets, and we will also be able to value and care for it on our own.

On the other hand, this science provides theoretical and practical inputs to many other scientific disciplines, thanks to which diseases can be fought and our quality of life improved.

Biology areas

Contemporary biology has a very high level of diversification, reflected in its numerous branches, according to the specific type of living beings and/or ecosystems of interest, or the perspective it adopts regarding them:

• Zoology. The specific study of the animal kingdom in its different variants and levels.
• Botany. The study of the plant kingdom: plants, trees, algae, and some other photosynthetic forms.
• Microbiology. The one that focuses its study on microscopic life, the one that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
• Parasitology. He is interested in animals that survive at the expense of other living things, harming them as they invade their bodies.
• Genetics. He focuses his study of life on the laws of the transmission of biological information and generational inheritance.
• Biochemistry. It has to do with the chemical and molecular processes of living beings and the substances they generate.
• Marine biology. He limits his study to life forms found in the oceans and coasts.
• Biotechnology. The understanding of biological laws with a view to their industrial or technological use: biological pesticides, organic fertilizers, etc.
• Systematic. It deals with the classification of the species of known living beings, from the understanding of their evolutionary or phylogenetic history.

Auxiliary Sciences

Biology is part of other sciences and disciplines, such as biochemistry (sum of biology and chemistry), biophysics (sum of biology and physics), astrobiology (sum of biology and astronomy ), biomedicine (sum of biology and medicine), etc.

At the same time, it borrows material from chemistry, mathematics, physics, and various engineering and computer science, to compose its methods of analysis and measurement, as well as to build its specialized tools and apparatus.

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What is biology about? History, Importance, Biology Topics

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