Biology: Life, ecology, and the Future of Life

I. Biology

Biology is the study of living things and their life processes, involving all the physical and chemical properties of life. The trend of modern interdisciplinary research and the unification of scientific knowledge and research in different fields have resulted in a great deal of overlap between the field of biology and other scientific disciplines. Modern principles from other fields such as chemistry, medicine, and physics are combined with biological principles from fields such as biochemistry, biomedicine, and biophysics.

For purposes of study, biology is subdivided into several separate branches, but all of them are related to each other based on fundamental principles. Thus, although it is customary to separate the study of plants (botany) from the study of animals (zoology), and the study of biological structure (morphology) from the study of biological function (physiology), there are certain biological phenomena in common with all living things - for example, reproduction, cell division, and the various ways in which genetic material is transmitted.

Biological research is usually conducted on the basis of dealing with the basic units of life. For example, at the level of molecular biology, life is seen as a manifestation of the chemical and energy conversion that takes place between the many chemical components that make up an organism. With the development of powerful and sophisticated experimental instruments and technologies, people can not only understand and define the most basic physical and chemical organization (ultrastructure) of biological molecules with high precision, but also understand and define the reproduction mode of living matter with high precision at the molecular level. The rise of genomics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries was particularly important to these biological advances.

A brief history of biology

In all the history of science, two factors have caused the discipline to make remarkable progress in a relatively short period of time. One is a creative mind that can discard hitherto accepted theories and propose new hypotheses. The other is technical tools and capability experiments to test hypotheses.

In biology, for example, people have speculated about the basic structure of plants and animals for hundreds of years, but it was not until the widespread use of optical instruments revealed the concept of the cell that a widely accepted hypothesis was developed: the cell theory. For example, the importance of Gregor Mendel's work on the genetic patterns of peas was ignored for many years until technological advances made it possible to discover chromosomes and their role in cell division and inheritance and confirmed Mendel's work.

Although the origin of biological studies is not known, early humans must have had some knowledge of the plants and animals around them to survive. The archaeological record shows that humans domesticated almost all tamed animals long before the development of civilization and developed sufficiently stable and efficient agricultural systems. Therefore, it is certain that the history of biology predates the beginning of human writing and recording.

It can also be seen from the myths and records of Fuxi, Shennong and Huangdi that in ancient China people already had the ability to use animals and plants in farming, living and medicine. But it was not until the 4th century BC in ancient Greece, with the development of philosophy and physics, that scholars gradually shifted their focus from the supernatural world to understanding the natural world. For example, early anatomists dissected animals not to understand their structure, but to study their organs for the ability to predict the future.

And then in Europe science lay dormant for almost 1,000 years. Until the 9th century, the Arab sphere of influence extended to Spain, and as with other disciplines, Arab scholars became the main promoters of science and biology. At the same time, due to the resurgence of technological development in China, new technological inventions are flowing from there to the West. The Chinese discovered how to make paper and how to print with movable type, two achievements that had an immeasurable impact on learning. Another important development that also took place during this period was the introduction of the so-called Arabic numerals into Europe from India. Later in the Renaissance, artists carried out a lot of anatomical work in order to study the structure of the human body, and also greatly promoted the development of biology.

The microscope was invented in the 17th century. Biology throughout the 17th and 18th centuries focused on the systematic classification of biology, and this period produced a large number of great works of human anatomy and illustrations of flora and fauna.

The 19th century was one of the great advances in biology: in addition to the development of the theory of evolution, the cell theory was established, which laid the foundation for modern embryology, and the discovery of the laws of heredity.

Biology in the 20th and 21st centuries

Just as the 19th century is considered the age of cell biology, the 20th and 21st centuries are considered to be characterized by developments in molecular biology.