1. What is biology?

0 comments
Biology is a field of study that we are completely familiar with because it is one of the main subject we all study when we were children at school. Anyway to lay the foundations, I would like to start from scratch giving you a brief definition about what biology is and its branches.
We can define biology as the science in charge of the study of living organisms, their interactions and their environment. The scope of biology is really large and it goes from submicroscope and microscope cell study to ecosystems and even the whole planet Earth.
Study fields of study
Biology is included within the natural sciences which scope is the physical world, its phenomena and processes. A quite common division between these sciences establishes a differentiation between life sciences (mainly biology and medicine) and physical sciences which study the inert matter (physics, chemistry, astronomy and geology). Similarly, we can also find other interdisciplinary branches built on this division, like biophysics and biochemistry.
Natural sciences are, at times, known as “pure sciences” due to the fact that they are based on the use of quantitative data, whereas social sciences, to lead their research about the study of social and human behaviour, use qualitative assessments much more often.
Branches of science diagram
Biology, as I said, on account of its really large scope of study is divided into several branches and subdisciplines. Thus, for example, the biologists who study anatomy are focused on the structure of an entire organism, physiologists research how these organisms work internally, botanists are specialized in the study of flora, zoologists explore fauna and so on…
But in this blog due to its own purpose, we will mainly focus on two aspects:

      Molecular Biology which is the study of the macromolecules that are the bricks of life and their interactions (molecules such as DNA, RNA and proteins).

      Cellular Biology whose study field is the cellular structure and its functions.

Source: OpenStax College, Biology. OpenStax College. 30 May 2013.


Your opinion matters