Biology

Bio means life and logy means study.

Biology, is the study of living things and their vital processes. The field deals with all the physicochemical aspects of life. The modern tendency toward cross-disciplinary research and the unification of scientific knowledge and investigation from different fields has resulted in significant overlap of the field of biology with other scientific disciplines. Modern principles of other fields, chemistry, medicine, and physics, for example are integrated with those of biology in areas such as biochemistry, biomedicine, and biophysics.

Major Branches of Biology 

Biology is subdivided into separate branches for convenience of study, though all the subdivisions are interrelated by basic principles. Thus, while it is custom to separate the study of plants (botany) from that of animals (zoology), and the study of the structure of organisms (morphology) from that of function (physiology), all living things share in common certain biological phenomena for example, various means of reproduction, cell division, and the transmission of genetic material.

Biology is often approached on the basis of levels that deal with fundamental units of life. At the level of molecular biology, for example, life is regarded as a manifestation of chemical and energy transformations that occur among the many chemical constituents that compose an organism. As a result of the development of increasingly powerful and precise laboratory instruments and techniques, it is possible to understand and define with high precision and accuracy not only the ultimate  physiochemical organization (ultrastructure) of the molecules in living matter but also the way living matter reproduces at the molecular level. Especially crucial to those advances was the rise of genomics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Cell biology is the study of cells, the fundamental units of structure and function in living organisms. Cells were first observed in the 17th century, when the compound microscope was invented. Before that time, the individual organism was studied as a whole in a field known as organismic biology; that area of research remains an important component of the biological sciences. Population biology deals with groups or populations of organisms that inhabit a given area or region. Included at that level are studies of the roles that specific kinds of plants and animals play in the complex and self-perpetuating interrelationships that exist between the living and the nonliving world, as well as studies of the built-in controls that maintain those relationships naturally. Those broadly based levels, molecules, cells, whole organisms, and populations may be further subdivided for study, giving rise to specializations such as morphology, taxonomy, biophysics, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics, and ecology. A field of biology may be especially concerned with the investigation of one kind of living thing for example, the study of birds in ornithology, the study of fishes in ichthyology, or the study of microorganisms in microbiology.

History of Biology

The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to Ayurveda, ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This ancient work was further developed in the Middle Ages by Muslim physicians and scholars such as Avicenna. During the European Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek revealed by means of microscopy the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, encouraged the growth of natural history (although it entrenched the argument from design).

Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery.

In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work in botany by Carl Correns led to the rapid development of genetics applied to fruit flies by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the "neo-Darwinian synthesis". New disciplines developed rapidly, especially after Watson and Crick proposed the structure of DNA. Following the establishment of the Central Dogma and the cracking of the genetic code, biology was largely split between organismal biology the fields that deal with whole organisms and groups of organisms—and the fields related to cellular and molecular biology. By the late 20th century, new fields like genomics and proteomics were reversing this trend, with organismal biologists using molecular techniques, and molecular and cell biologists investigating the interplay between genes and the environment, as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.

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Zoology

Zoology (/zoʊˈɒlədʒi/) is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems.  The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion ('animal'), and λόγος, logos ('knowledge', 'study').

Ornithology, a branch of zoology dealing with the study of birds.

Here we discuss both in this section.

History of Zoology

Much of the early information about human anatomy came from the dissection and study of animals, although some efforts were made to understand and classify animals.  It was during the Renaissance that the study of zoology began to separate from human anatomy, as great artists who sought to understand the makeup of both men and animals emerged.  Great natural scientists, such as Konrad Gesner (1516-1565), recognized as the father of zoology, developed the field as a scientific inquiry.  Other investigators, such as Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), contributed accurate observations of animals.  Natural philosopher and theologian John Ray (1627-1705) also sought to understand and classify all known animals.

The classification and physiological studies by these early naturalists provided the foundation upon which the zoology of the nineteenth century was unified by the theory of evolution.  Comparison of animals allowed an understanding of how various animals might have developed.  Zoology in the late twentieth century developed as a major force behind the understanding of total interrelationships and the ecology movement.

Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) first attempted a comprehensive classification of animals.

He was the first to establish some type of hierarchy of animals based on the logic of structure.

Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79) wrote a major work on natural history.

The great physician Galen (129-199?) dissected only animals for his studies of human anatomy, and his works became the standard for use in medicine throughout the Middle Ages.

In the twelfth century The idea emerged that medical practice should be made a division of the "natural" part of philosophy, as Aristotle had done. By the mid-thirteenth century.

These ideas were famous during Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Most important of all was the invention of the printing press with movable type by Johann Gutenberg (1398?-1468) around 1455. This enabled scholars to write about their findings and ideas,

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was motivated to study animals, comparing them to the physical form of man.  He was the first to describe the homology, or the arrangements of the bones and joints, of a horse.  He noted how they were alike and how they differed from the human.  Homology would become an important concept in classifying distinct units, and later play a part in the study of evolution.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), the great anatomist and illustrator, encouraged the new spirit of investigation by dissecting humans, he also used animal parts to show structures such as the kidney.  These artists and early anatomists promoted knowledge through dissection and a new spirit of investigation.  Francis Bacon (1561-1626) gave increasing emphasis to direct observation and experiment, which caught on in the seventeenth century.

Gesner was the first botanist to grasp the importance of floral structures to establish a systematic key of classification of plants.  He drew over 1,500 plates himself for his Opera botanica, published in 1551 and 1571.

Since Gesner was the first naturalist to sketch fossils, he is considered to the first paleontologist.

Many other people who made famous discoveries were interested in animals.  William Harvey (1578-1657) demonstrated the circulation of the blood and function of the heart, arteries, and veins.  The invention of the microscope by Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) assisted in comparing fine structures that previously could not be seen with the unaided eye.  Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) and Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), who discovered the role of the capillaries, added to the body of information about animals.

The work of the great naturalists culminated in the work of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).  His binomial system of nomenclature (genus and species) and Systema naturae (1735) marked the beginning of the modern system of classification and helped define zoology as a distinct discipline of study.

And than 18 and 19th centuries zoological knowledge is on its peak and now zoology is a major branch of science which discuss about birds animals their systems etc .

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Botany

Botany, also called plant science(s), plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology.  A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specializes in this field.  The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs", "grass", or "fodder";  βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν (boskein), "to feed" or "to graze".  Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress.  Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximately 20,000 are bryophytes.

History of Botany

The history of botany goes back to 4th-century B.C.E.  Man's curiosity about plants led to many discoveries in Botany which shaped our current lives in many ways.  At present, various sub-fields of botany have already emerged.  These include the following: plant pathology, plant ecology, paleobotany, and forensic botany.

Among the earliest of botanical works, written around 300 B.C.E., are two large treatises by Theophrastus, a philosopher and disciple of Aristotle: On the History of Plants (Historia Plantarum) and On the Causes of Plants.  Together these books constitute the most important contribution to botanical science during antiquity and into the Middle Ages.  As a result, Theophrastus is considered the founder of botany. 

The Roman medical writer Dioscorides in the first century C.E., provided important evidence on Greek and Roman knowledge of medicinal plants.  He categorized plants based on their medicinal, culinary, or aromatic value. 

In 1665, using an early microscope, Robert Hooke discovered cells in cork and a short time later in living plant tissue.  The German Leonhart Fuchs, the Swiss Conrad von Gesner, and the British authors Nicholas Culpeper and John Gerard published information on the medicinal uses of plants.

In 1753, Carl Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, which included 6,000 plant species.  He established the binomial nomenclature, which has been used in the naming of living things ever since.

1818: Chlorophyll was discovered.

1847: The process of photosynthesis was discovered by Mir.  Hoover, was the 1862 Remand A Meister Intel mechanism.

1862: The exact mechanism of photosynthesis was discovered while starch was formed in green cells under the microscope.

Earle 20th Century: The Processes of Nitrogen Phosphates, Nitrifiers, and Immunofacts Was Discovered.

 1903: The two bands of chlorophyll—A and B—were discovered.  Lauren turned

1936: Through his experiment, Alexander Wipern demonstrated the mechanism of the synthesis of organic matter from inorganic molecules.

1940s: Ecology became a separate discipline.  Technology has helped specialists in botany to see and understand the three-dimensional nature of cells, and genetic engineering of plants.  This had greatly improved agricultural crops and products.

Until the present, 2023, the study of plants continues as botanists try to understand both the structure, behavior and cellular activities of plants.  This endeavor is to develop better crops, find new medicines, and explore ways of maintaining an ecological balance on Earth to sustain both plant and animal life.

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