Biological Science

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE

1. INTRODUCTION

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:

1. Cells are the basic unit of life

2. New species and inherited traits are the product of evolution

3. Genes are the basic unit of heredity

4. An organism regulates its internal environment to maintain a stable and constant condition

5. Living organisms consume and transform energy.

Sub disciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.

The term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, "life" and the suffix -λογία, -logia, "study of." It appears in German (as Biologie) as early as 1791, and may be a back-formation from the older word Amphibiologie (meaning the study of amphibians) by deletion of the initial amphi-. The name is believed to have first been used by Karl Burdach (1776–1847) to denote the study of man. It was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) who first used it in its wider sense.

Although biology in its modern form is a relatively recent development, sciences related to and included within it have been studied since ancient times. Natural philosophy was studied as early as the ancient...