Why is biology the most complex science

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Three major branches of science? If you can't, then you are a wuss. This is such a nerd war. This argument and most of the comments are so childish that it repulses me. What is hard for you may not be hard for others. If you're used to physics, go do some biology. If you're used to biology, go learn physics and for the sake of Einstein, learn some math while you're at it. Each discipline will stretch and blow your mind in a different way.

I promise. Unless you are a biased douche like most of the commenters. Also, just so you know, I also had to learn Arabic in 63 weeks when I was in the military. Harder than grad level biology and harder than your precious quantum mechanics.

But each organism is different. Every Carbon atom isn't even remotely close to one another. In one mole of Carbon atoms you could have every isotope present. You could have hydrogenic carbon atoms, carbanions, radical carbocations. A carbon atom in graphite is entirely different than carbon atoms in Diamond.

Sp, Sp2, Sp3 are all entirely different species of carbon atoms. Carbon atoms being made in nucleosynthesis in the core of stars is different than the carbon in your Britta filter. You could argue they are all carbon atoms, But they are no way the same. Just like no two house flies are the same but they are still house flies. You kinda shoot your self in the foot with this point. Biological systems are more complicated than physical systems.

I will agree with you on that. Does that mean that biology is harder? Not at all. The reason I think biology is easier than what I consider to be "hard sciences" is the fact that biology is based so heavily on observation.

The subject is essentially based on simply performing experiments and observing the results. I don't think this requires very much creativity. It requires to be able to make deductions, certainly, but not to the same extent as other subjects require. Granted, many branches of physics work the same way. But theoretical physics, pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, etc. In these subjects much more work is expended on thinking abstractly and proving things rigorously.

No amount of experimentation will ever furnish a proof in any of these subjects. You don't get to cop out and wait around while your PCR runs. That's why I think these sorts of subjects are more difficult. Biology is not harder than physics. First, biological systems are physical systems, which means any complexity inherent in a model of such a system at the biological-theoretic level is less than a similar model of the same system in a physical-theoretic idiom; model complexity increases with the precision of the model.

Second, the "burden of proof" is far, far higher in physics. When an experimental physicist confirms the existence of a new particular, he does so based on a 5-sigma result, meaning that there is 1 in 3. No such level of precision exists in biology. And third, biological models, almost exclusively, do no work, meaning they make no testable predictions. Physics is eminently testable. For example, when Einstein corrected Newton for the perihelion shift of Mercury, he did so at 26 decimal places.

Forgive me, but for anyone NOT a biologist, it is laughably absurd to him or her the idea that biology is as difficult as physics a subject of inquiry. Immunology ,genetics?? THese shits like gen,immun or whatever the hell are just looking under microscope which are also result of physics and observing nothing else. Even a child can understand them. But the higher physics like quantum not even people in world can understand.

No shitty biologist. Beside madarchod , bio was shitty classification and observation till 19th century. After physics developed, mofos like you could obseve more about the organism.

It is more like trying to remember the weird words I've never even heard in my life. Seriously it is very annoying, damn those greek words why do they have to be insanely difficult to spell and memorize. Biology in general isn't hard if you actually focus, if you still don't understand. I remember my biology teacher in highschool, he was amazing in biology but horrible in explaining in both oral and written ways : at that time google wasn't as good as it is today, but you would really suffer from getting bad explanations or bad ways of explanations regardless.

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Beginning university students in the sciences usually consider biology to be much easier than physics or chemistry. From their experience in high school, physics has math and formulae that must be understood to be applied correctly, but the study of biology relies mainly on memorization.

But in reality biology is much more complex than the physical sciences, and understanding it requires more, not less, brain work. Biological processes of course are consequences of physics and chemistry, which is why we require our biology students to study the physical sciences.

But organisms are also historical entities, and that's where the complexities arise. The facts of physics and chemistry are constant across time and space. That's not just a statement that fruit flies are different from house flies. Rather, each fruit fly is different from every other fruit fly alive today, and from every other fruit fly that ever lived, and it's the differences that make biology both thrilling and hard.

The differences have several causes and consequences. One cause is that biology depends on past history, because descendants are not identical to their ancestors. This is true at all scales, and the fundamental reason is that the process of genetic inheritance is not perfect.

The DNA sequences we inherit from our parents are never identical copies of their DNA - instead they contain copying errors. So every copy is slightly different, even between two siblings. We are all mutants. These differences also accumulate over the generations, like in the party game Americans call "telephone" and the British call "Chinese whispers".

The second cause is natural selection, which shapes the accumulation of differences, favouring those that improve survival and reproduction and making it harder for disadvantageous differences to persist over the generations. And because most natural selection arises from interactions with other evolving organisms rather than with the relatively stable physical environment, the changes are rapid.

The result is that all biological systems are diverse at all levels. Even high school students are used to the idea of 'biodiversity', meaning the dramatic differences between different species of plants and animals.

But the diversity is much more ubiquitous. Within each multicellular species, every individual is genetically different; every fruit fly is genetically different from every other fruit fly. The invisible bacteria turn out to be much more diverse than anyone would have thought. In lab cultures, bacterial mutation rates are high enough that a single ml of culture will contain millions of different genotypes. Even genetically identical cells are not functionally identical.

When a cell divides its molecules are randomly distributed between the two daughters; because 'randomly' does not mean 'evenly', these daughters will have inherited different sets of the proteins and RNAs that carry out their functions. And even if the two cells had identical contents, these contents would still have different interactions - repressors bump into cofactors at different times, DNA polymerase slips or doesn't slip at different points in its progress along a chromosome.

Understanding the how and why of biological phenomena thus requires us to consider historical and ecological factors that are many orders of magnitude more complex than those of physical systems. The critical word is probably 'population'. Biologists rarely try to define it, but they use the term everywhere to refer to similar but not identical organisms or cells or even molecules that interact in some way.

And population thinking is probably what makes biology so much more complex than the physical sciences. Of course we can't consider all of the differences all of the time, so at different levels of study we biologists try to pull out the factors that we think will matter most.

Molecular and cell biologists work with populations of molecules, but they keep everything else as identical as possible. Developmental biologists study how cells become different, but they use pure-breeding lines and clones to ensure that the genetic properties of their organisms are as identical as possible. Ecologists pay attention to the big differences between species, but under conditions where they can ignore the differences between the individuals of each species.

I don't think population thinking is addressed in high school biology. We can't really blame their teachers, because the issues probably were never made clear to them either.

Instead high school teachers pass on the facts they remember from what they themselves learned at university. The result is that their students enter university expecting their biology education to consist mainly of memorizing lots of new facts.

We instructors want our new students to start focusing on understanding complex processes and interactions, between entities that are themselves populations of diverse and somewhat unpredictable entities. We're thus asking them to set aside all the learning strategies that worked well for them in high school biology, and to learn in a new way. Advances in microscopy also had a profound impact on biological thinking.

In the early 19th century, a number of biologists pointed to the central importance of the cell and in , Schleiden and Schwann began promoting the now universal ideas of the cell theory. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was the first to present a coherent theory of evolution, although it was the British naturalist Charles Darwin who spread the theory of natural selection throughout the scientific community.

In , the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA marked the transition to the era of molecular genetics. Phrenology: Dr. Science is a process for learning about the natural world. Most scientific investigations involve the testing of potential answers to important research questions. For example, oncologists cancer doctors are interested in finding out why some cancers respond well to chemotherapy while others are unaffected.

Many years of research have produced numerous scientific papers documenting the evidence for a connection between cancer, genetics, and treatment response. This makes science an iterative, or cumulative, process, where previous research is used as the foundation for new research. Our current understanding of any issue in the sciences is the culmination of all previous work. Pseudoscience is a belief presented as scientific although it is not a product of scientific investigation.

Pseudoscience is often known as fringe or alternative science. It usually lacks the carefully-controlled and thoughtfully-interpreted experiments which provide the foundation of the natural sciences and which contribute to their advancement. Science is knowledge obtained from logical inferences and deductive experimentation that attempts to comprehend nature.

The steps of the scientific method will be examined in detail later, but one of the most important aspects of this method is the testing of hypotheses testable statements by means of repeatable experiments. Although using the scientific method is inherent to science, it is inadequate in determining what science is. This is because it is relatively easy to apply the scientific method to disciplines such as physics and chemistry, but when it comes to disciplines like archaeology, paleoanthropology, psychology, and geology, the scientific method becomes less applicable as it becomes more difficult to repeat experiments.

These areas of study are still sciences, however. Consider archaeology: even though one cannot perform repeatable experiments, hypotheses may still be supported. For instance, an archaeologist can hypothesize that an ancient culture existed based on finding a piece of pottery. Further hypotheses could be made about various characteristics of this culture.

These hypotheses may be found to be plausible supported by data and tentatively accepted, or may be falsified and rejected altogether due to contradictions from data and other findings.

A group of related hypotheses, that have not been disproven, may eventually lead to the development of a verified theory. A theory is a tested and confirmed explanation for observations or phenomena that is supported by a large body of evidence.

Science may be better defined as fields of study that attempt to comprehend the nature of the universe. Scientists seek to understand the world and the way it operates.

To do this, they use two methods of logical thinking: inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Scientific Reasoning : Scientists use two types of reasoning, inductive and deductive, to advance scientific knowledge. Inductive reasoning is a form of logical thinking that uses related observations to arrive at a general conclusion. This type of reasoning is common in descriptive science. A life scientist such as a biologist makes observations and records them.

These data can be qualitative or quantitative and the raw data can be supplemented with drawings, pictures, photos, or videos. From many observations, the scientist can infer conclusions inductions based on evidence. Inductive reasoning involves formulating generalizations inferred from careful observation and the analysis of a large amount of data. Brain studies provide an example.

In this type of research, many live brains are observed while people are doing a specific activity, such as viewing images of food. The resultant increase in radioactivity is observed by a scanner. Then researchers can stimulate that part of the brain to see if similar responses result. Deductive reasoning or deduction is the type of logic used in hypothesis-based science.

In deductive reason, the pattern of thinking moves in the opposite direction as compared to inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is a form of logical thinking that uses a general principle or law to forecast specific results.

From those general principles, a scientist can extrapolate and predict the specific results that would be valid as long as the general principles are valid. Studies in climate change can illustrate this type of reasoning.

For example, scientists may predict that if the climate becomes warmer in a particular region, then the distribution of plants and animals should change. These predictions have been written and tested, and many such predicted changes have been observed, such as the modification of arable areas for agriculture correlated with changes in the average temperatures. Both types of logical thinking are related to the two main pathways of scientific study: descriptive science and hypothesis-based science.

Descriptive or discovery science, which is usually inductive, aims to observe, explore, and discover, while hypothesis-based science, which is usually deductive, begins with a specific question or problem and a potential answer or solution that can be tested. The boundary between these two forms of study is often blurred and most scientific endeavors combine both approaches.

The fuzzy boundary becomes apparent when thinking about how easily observation can lead to specific questions. He eventually developed a company and produced the hook-and-loop fastener popularly known today as Velcro.

Descriptive science and hypothesis-based science are in continuous dialogue. A Burr : This fruit attaches to animal fur via the hooks on its surface to improve distribution. Velcro is an example of a biomimetic invention which has copied burrs and uses small flexible hooks to reversibly attach to fluffy surfaces.

The scientific method is a process by which observations are questioned; hypotheses are created and tested; and the results are analyzed. Discuss hypotheses and the components of a scientific experiment as part of the scientific method. Biologists study the living world by posing questions about it and seeking science -based responses. This approach is common to other sciences as well and is often referred to as the scientific method. The scientific method can be applied to almost all fields of study as a logical, rational, problem-solving method.

Sir Francis Bacon : Sir Francis Bacon — is credited with being the first to define the scientific method. The scientific process typically starts with an observation often a problem to be solved that leads to a question. A teenager notices that his friend is really tall and wonders why. The Scientific Method : The scientific method consists of a series of well-defined steps.

If a hypothesis is not supported by experimental data, a new hypothesis can be proposed. Recall that a hypothesis is an educated guess that can be tested. Hypotheses often also include an explanation for the educated guess. To solve one problem, several hypotheses may be proposed. For example, the student might believe that his friend is tall because he drinks a lot of milk. Once a hypothesis has been selected, the student can make a prediction.

A prediction is similar to a hypothesis but it is truly a guess. For instance, they might predict that their friend is tall because he drinks a lot of milk.

A valid hypothesis must be testable. It should also be falsifiable, meaning that it can be disproven by experimental results. This step—openness to disproving ideas—is what distinguishes sciences from non-sciences. The presence of the supernatural, for instance, is neither testable nor falsifiable. To test a hypothesis, a researcher will conduct one or more experiments designed to eliminate one or more of the hypotheses.

Each experiment will have one or more variables and one or more controls. A variable is any part of the experiment that can vary or change during the experiment.