INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY
Biology is the study of living things. It encompasses the cellular basis of living things, the energy metabolism that underlies the activities of life, and the genetic basis for inheritance in organisms. Biology also includes the study of evolutionary relationships among organisms and the diversity of life on Earth. It considers the biology of microorganisms, plants, and animals, for example, and it brings together the structural and functional relationships that underlie their day-to-day activities. Biology draws on the sciences of chemistry and physics for its foundations and applies the laws of these disciplines to living things.
Many subdisciplines and special areas of biology exist, which can be conveniently divided into practical and theoretical categories. Types of practical biology include plant breeding, wildlife management, medical science, and crop production. Theoretical biology encompasses such disciplines as physiology (the study of the function of living things), biochemistry (the study of the chemistry of organisms), taxonomy (classification), ecology (the study of populations and their interactions with each other and their environments), and microbiology (the study of microscopic organisms).
CHARACTERISTICS OF LIVING THINGS
Defining a living thing is a difficult proposition, as is defining “life”—that property possessed by living things. However, a living thing possesses certain properties that help define what life is.
Complex organization
Living things have a level of complexity and organization not found in lifeless objects. At its most fundamental level, a living thing is composed of one or more cells. These units, generally too small to be seen with the naked eye, are organized into tissues. A tissue is a series of cells that accomplish a shared function. Tissues, in turn, form organs, such as the stomach and kidney. A number of organs working together compose an organ system. An organism is a complex series of various organ systems.
Metabolism
Living things exhibit a rapid turnover of chemical materials, which is referred to as metabolism. Metabolism involves exchanges of chemical matter with the external environment and extensive transformations of organic matter within the cells of a living organism. Metabolism generally involves the release or use of chemical energy. Nonliving things do not display metabolism.
Responsiveness
All living things are able to respond to stimuli in the external environment. For example, living things respond to changes in light, heat, sound, and chemical and mechanical contact. To detect stimuli, organisms have means for receiving information, such as eyes, ears, and taste buds.
To respond effectively to changes in the environment, an organism must coordinate its responses. A system of nerves and a number of chemical regulators called hormones coordinate activities within an organism. The organism responds to the stimuli by means of a number of effectors, such as muscles and glands. Energy is generally used in the process.
Organisms change their behavior in response to changes in the surrounding environment. For example, an organism may move in response to its environment. Responses such as this occur in definite patterns and make up the behavior of an organism. The behavior is active, not passive; an animal responding to a stimulus is different from a stone rolling down a hill. Living things display responsiveness;nonliving things do not.
Growth
Growth requires an organism to take in material from the environment and organize the material into its own structures. To accomplish growth, an organism expends some of the energy it acquires during metabolism. An organism has a pattern for accomplishing the building of growth structures.
During growth, a living organism transforms material that is unlike itself into materials that are like it. A person, for example, digests a meal of meat and vegetables and transforms the chemical material into more of himself or herself. A nonliving organism does not display this characteristic.
Reproduction
A living thing has the ability to produce copies of itself by the process known as reproduction. These copies are made while the organism is still living. Among plants and simple animals, reproduction is often an extension of the growth process. More complex organisms engage in a type of reproduction called sexual reproduction, in which two parents contribute to the formation of a new individual. During this process, a new combination of traits can be produced.
Asexual reproduction involves only one parent, and the resulting cells are generally identical to the parent cell. For example, bacteria grow and quickly reach maturity, after which they split into two organisms by a process of asexual reproduction called binary fission.
Evolution
Living organisms have the ability to adapt to their environment through the process of evolution. During evolution, changes occur in populations, and the organisms in the population become better able to metabolize, respond, and reproduce. They develop abilities to cope with their environment that their ancestors did not have.
Evolution also results in a greater variety of organisms than existed in previous eras. This proliferation of populations of organisms is unique to living things.
Ecology
The environment influences the living things that it surrounds. Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and their relationships with their environment. Both biotic factors (living things) and abiotic factors (nonliving things) can alter the environment. Rain and sunlight are non-living components, for example, that greatly influence the environment. Living things may migrate or hibernate if the environment becomes difficult to live in.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Biology is one of the major sciences. Scientists have acquired biological knowledge through a process known as the scientific method. The steps of the scientific method make up an orderly way of gaining information about the biological world. Sometimes the knowledge gained is useful in solving particular problems; other times it is simply of interest without any practical application at the time. The scientific method requires a systematic search for information by observation and experimentation. The basic steps of the scientific method are stating a problem based on observations, developing a research question or questions, forming a hypothesis, experimenting to test the hypothesis, collecting information, recording and analyzing data, and forming a conclusion.
Observation
The first step in the scientific method is stating a problem based on observation. In this stage, the scientist recognizes that something has happened and that it occurs repeatedly. Therefore, the scientist formulates a question or states a problem for investigation. The next step in the scientific method is to explore resources that may have information about that question or problem. Here, the scientist conducts a literature review and interacts with other scientists to develop knowledge about the question at hand.
Hypothesis, experimentation, and analysis
Next, a hypothesis is formed, meaning that the scientist proposes a possible solution to the question, realizing that the answer could be incorrect. The scientist tests the hypothesis through experiments that include experimental and control groups. Data from the experiments are collected, recorded, and analyzed.
Conclusion
After analyzing the data, the scientist draws a conclusion. A valid conclusion must be based on the facts observed in the experiments. If the data from repeated experiments support the hypothesis, the scientist publishes the hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss.
Theory and law
Other scientists not only may repeat the experiments but also may carry out additional experiments to challenge the findings. If the hypothesis is tested and confirmed often enough, the scientific community calls the hypothesis a theory. Then numerous additional experiments test the theory using rigorous experimental methods. Repeated challenges to the theory are presented. If the results continue to support the theory and are found to be universally applicable, the theory is elevated to a scientific law. A scientific law is a universal, uniform, or constant fact of nature. Sir Isaac Newton’s law of gravity is an example of a scientific law.
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