Biology Homework Help: Introduction to Biology - By: johana

In this article, Biology Homework Help will be giving a general introduction to the study of Biology. Biology is the study of life and living organisms. It studies all those physiochemical mechanisms that together make the existence of life possible. Because of the enormity of the subject matter including as it does all life on earth, scholars have divided it into sub-divisions for convenience of study. Thus we have botany which is the study of plants, zoology which deals with the animal kingdom, morphology or the study of the structure of organisms, physiology which deals with the function of various organs and so on. Some of the newer sub-disciplines that you’ll come across in Biology Homework Help include molecular biology, cell biology, population biology etc. Biology Homework Help finds that these disciplines arose out of the new approach prevalent in the natural sciences which is to look at all the biological phenomena that living organisms share as a single whole thus focusing on the greater picture.

Biology Homework Help will now take a brief look at history of biology. Biology is one of the oldest sciences. In order to survive man had to learn about the various plants and animals and their nature. As early as 9000 BC man had learned to domesticate dogs, goats, sheep etc. and agriculture is believed to have started with the Neolithic period. Later, as civilizations started to mature, more and more information on natural history was collected. Though the knowledge could not be compared to modern biology, being a mix of fact and fantasy, Biology Homework Help does know that the Chinese emperor Shen Nung did write a book on the medicinal properties of plants in 2800 BC. Millet, dates, melons, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as cotton, were known to the Harappan people (2500 BC) and Biology Homework Help will tell you that the Babylonians knew that the date palm reproduces sexually and that pollen taken from the male plant could be used to fertilize female plants. Egyptians too possessed considerable medical knowledge as evidenced by the Egyptian mummies.

Biology continued to be a mix of science and superstition until 6th century BC and the rise of the Greek civilization. It was the Greek philosophers who can be said to have initiated the study of biology as they sought to understand the ‘natural law’ which was thought to govern the universe. The Greeks believed that this law could be comprehended through observation and deduction.
Biology Homework Help finds that after the Greeks it was the Arabs who were responsible for most of the scientific advances from the 3rd to the 11th century as European science when into dormancy. During the 12th century, zoology and botany studies began in Europe from the study of healing plants and veterinary medicines and also because of the large scale hunting that was a favourite pastime of the aristocracy which led to a basic knowledge and interest in anatomy. With the coming of the Renaissance, there was a large scale revival of the natural sciences.

In recent years there has been a shift to a more holistic approach to scientific investigation and as a result there has been an overlapping of the areas of study of biology and those of other sciences. Today we see the integration of the principles of sciences like physics and chemistry with that of biology to give rise to disciplines like biochemistry and biophysics.

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