Introduction to Biology:

This introductory course defines biology and its relationship to other sciences. We examine
the overarching theories of life from biological research and also explore the fundamental
concepts and principles of the study of living organisms and their interaction with the
environment. We will examine how life is organized into hierarchical levels; how living
organisms use and produce energy; how life grows, develops, and reproduces; how life
responds to the environment to maintain internal stability; and how life evolves and adapts
to the environment.
This course is a part of our Community College (CC-OLI) series. Courses in this series are
particularly well-suited to the needs of introductory community college courses, but are
open for use by any instructor or student.

Branches of biology:
Fields dealing with animals:
Comparative anatomy (pronunciation) The scientific study of similarities
and differences in the bodily structures of distinct types of animals.
Entomology (pronunciation) The study of insects.

Ethology (pronunciation) The study of animal behavior.

Herpetology (pronunciation) The study of reptiles and amphibians.

Ichthyology (pronunciation) The study of fish.

Mammalogy (pronunciation) The study of mammals.

Ornithology (pronunciation) The study of birds.

Primatology (pronunciation) The study of primates.

Veterinary science (pronunciation) Animal medicine.

Zoology (pronunciation) The study of animals.

Branches of biology relevant to the study of evolution:

Biogeography (pronunciation) The study of the geographic distributions of

living organisms.

Developmental biology The study of the processes by which an

organism changes from a single cell into a mature, multicellular individual.

Evolutionary biology The branch of biology concerned with the modes

of origin of new forms of life.

Ichnology (pronunciation) The scientific study of the fossilized traces of

past animal activity, such as footprints, burrows, trails, and borings.

Morphology (pronunciation) The branch of biology concerned with the

form and structure of living organisms.

Paleontology (pronunciation) The study of prehistoric life by means of

fossils.

Fields relating to the environment:

Astrobiology (pronunciation) The branch of biology concerned with the

effects of outer space on living organisms and with the search for
extraterrestrial life.

Bioclimatology (pronunciation) The study of the influence of climate on

living organisms.

Chronobiology (pronunciation) The study of time-dependent phenomena

in living organisms.

Conservation biology The branches of biology concerned

with habitatpreservation, the prevention of extinction, and conservation of
biodiversity.

Cryobiology (pronunciation) The study of the effects of low temperatures

on living organisms.

Ecology (pronunciation) The study of the interaction of organisms with

each other and with their environment.

Geobiology (pronunciation) A science that combines geology and biology

to study the interactions of organisms with their environment.

Limnology (pronunciation) The study of the physical and biological

conditions of freshwater, particularly of lakes and ponds.

Chemistry-based branches of biology:

Biochemistry (pronunciation) The study of life at the chemical level, in

particular the chemistry of proteins, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids.

Bioengineering (pronunciation) A hybrid field of scientific research that

uses the principles of biology and the techniques of engineering to produce
useful products.

Molecular biology The branch of biology that studies the formation,

structure, and function of macromolecules found in living organisms,
particularly nucleic acidsand proteins.

Branches of biology dealing with microorganisms and

microscopic structure:

Cytology (pronunciation) The study of living cells, in particular, their

physiological properties, structures, organelles, and method of division.

Histology (pronunciation) The study of the microscopic structure of cellular

tissue.

Microbiology (pronunciation) The branch of biology that

studies microorganisms and their effects on other organisms.

Protistology (pronunciation) The study of protists.

Medical branches of biology:

Anatomy (pronunciation) The study of the macroscopic structure

of multicellularorganisms.

Embryology (pronunciation) The study of embryos.

Endocrinology (pronunciation) The study of the endocrine glands.

Epidemiology (pronunciation) The study of the incidence of disease within

populations, and of optimal measures for its control.

Esthesiology (pronunciation) The scientific study of sensation.

Genetics (pronunciation) The study of heredity, especially the mechanisms

of hereditary transmission and variation of inherited characteristics.

Immunology (pronunciation) The study of the structure and function of

the immune system, innate and acquired immunity, the bodily distinction
of self from nonself, and laboratory techniques involving the interaction
of antigens with specificantibodies.

Koniology (pronunciation) The study of dust in relation to its effects on

health.

Mastology (pronunciation) The scientific study of the breasts.

Medicine The art and study of the prevention, cure, and alleviation of
disease, and the care of the injured.

Neurology (pronunciation) The branch of biology that studies the nervous

systemand its diseases.

Parasitology (pronunciation) The study of parasites.

Pathology (pronunciation) The study of the nature of disease and its

causes, processes, development, and consequences.

Physiology (pronunciation) The study of the physical function of living

organisms.

Pharmacology (pronunciation) The science and study of drugs.

Psychology (pronunciation) The study of human behavior.

Splanchnology (pronunciation) The study of the internal organs.

Surgery (pronunciation) The branch of medicine dealing with operative

procedures.

Toxicology (pronunciation) The study of toxins.

Urology (pronunciation) The study and treatment of disorders of

the urogenitalorgans.

Virology (pronunciation) The study of viruses.

Miscellaneous branches of biology:

Agriculture The science of crop and livestock production.

Bioinformatics (pronunciation) The use of computers to manage and

analyze biological data.

Biomathematics (pronunciation) An interdisciplinary field of study that

attempts to model biological processes using mathematical techniques.

Biophysics (pronunciation) An interdisciplinary science that applies the

theories and methods of physics to biological questions.

Botany (pronunciation) The study of plants.

Marine biology The study of marine organisms.

Mycology (pronunciation) The study of fungi.

The Scientific Method

Vocabulary
Hypothesis - a working assumption, a possible cause, an educated guess, a tentative answer to some question.
Contains only a statement of possible fact.
Prediction what you expect to be true if your hypothesis is correct, formed as an if-then statement.
Dependent variable in an experiment, the variable that will be measured or observed in response to the
experimental conditions.
Independent variable in an experiment, the variable that you will manipulate.
Control in an experiment, the control group is a treated exactly the same as your manipulated group except that
the manipulation is not performed

How to apply the scientific method

There are several steps to the scientific method:
1. Observe some aspect of the universe and formulate a question about your observation.
2. Invent a tentative description to explain what you observed, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with
what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments, further observations, or synthesizing other available data. Modify
the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
Step 1: Observations and Questions
Making observations and questions about the natural world can be more difficult than you might imagine. We
make innumerable observations every day about the world around us, but we often dont think to question
these observations. This is what scientists must do. Sometimes the observations and questions arise during
scientific investigation of a related question.
This step in the scientific method requires curiosity and good perception of the world.
Here, we will consider the question What determines how big a radish plant is? or What limits growth in
radish plants?
Step 2: Proposing a Hypothesis
A hypothesis includes a suggested explanation of the observation you made. It will generally provide
acausal explanation or propose some correlation.
Some hypotheses, however, are better than others.

A hypothesis must be testable. If your explanation (hypothesis) includes variables that are difficult to
quantify or measure, you will not be able to test your hypothesis.

A hypothesis must be falsifiable. This means that you have to be able to disprove your hypothesis. In
fact, when we test a hypothesis, we cannot conclude that our hypothesis is true; all we can conclude
after our test is that our hypothesis is supported or wrong.

Having multiple hypotheses is good try to test one at a time.

Restrict the hypotheses that you test to the educated guesses. While any testable, falsifiable
hypothesis can be used in the scientific method, some may seem highly unlikely as explanations right from
the beginning. You will save time if you start testing those that seem plausible given what you already
know about the natural world and the system you are observing.
Proposing a hypothesis can be the most imaginative and insightful step of the scientific method.
Sometimes the best explanation of your observations is not obvious. Think how long it took scientists to
hypothesize that kids resemble their parents because information is encoded in genes in every cell!

For our radish example, we could propose the following hypotheses:

1) Light availability limits a plants growth

2) Water availability limits a plants growth
3) Nitrogen availability in the soil limits a plants growth
4) Competition from other radish plants limits a plants growth
5) Amount of love and affection from the horticulturalist limits a plants growth
6) God decides how big a plant will be
Based on what we know about plant biology, 1-4 seem like plausible hypotheses. They may, in fact, all have
an effect on plant growth, and they may be interrelated. Hypothesis 5 is not a good hypothesis because love
and affection are hard to quantify. Hypothesis 6 is not a scientific hypothesis because it is not falsifiable
(how would you ever scientifically disprove that a supernatural being has an effect on plant growth?).
Null and alternative hypotheses:
The logic of traditional hypothesis testing requires that we set up two competing statements or hypotheses
referred to as the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. These hypotheses are mutually exclusive and
exhaustive.
A null hypothesis, H0, is typically the hypothesis you are trying to disprove/reject during your research it is
a hypothesis of no effect.
The alternative hypothesis, H1 is the hypothesis to be accepted if / when the null is rejected. The null
hypothesis is assumed to be true unless we find evidence to the contrary.
The final conclusion once the test has been carried out is always given in terms of the null hypothesis. We
either "Reject H0 in favor of H1" or "Do not reject H0".
Since the alternative hypothesis is often the hypothesis that the researcher would like to be true, it is
sometimes referred to as the Study Hypothesis or Research Hypothesis.
The hypotheses listed above for plant growth are all alternative hypotheses. There are null hypotheses that
correspond to each. For example, the null hypothesis for (1) is Light availability has no effect on growth in
plants. This is the hypothesis we set out to support or reject by designing our experiments and tests.
For more on null and alternative hypotheses, click here.
Step 3: Making predictions based on your hypothesis
Once you have a hypothesis, you want to figure out some way to test it and come up with predictions of what
will happen in the test. Predictions are if-then statements: if my hypothesis is true, then I expect to see X
result in an experiment, if my hypothesis is true, then I expect further observations to show X. Predictions
are usually test-specific.
In our radish example, we can make the following predictions:
1) If light availability limits a plants growth, then shaded plants will grow less than plants in full sun.
2) If water availability limits a plants growth, plants given more water will grow more.

3) If competition from other radish plants limits a plants growth, then a radish grown next to other radishes
will grow less than an isolated radish.
Step 4: Testing your hypothesis
Tests of your hypothesis can include:
1) Further observation
For example, if your hypothesis were Birds sing to attract mates, then you may make further
observations on the timing of singing in birds. Your prediction may be If my hypothesis is true, then birds
will sing mostly during the beginning of the breeding season, and singing during other times of the year
will be non-existent or greatly reduced
2) Synthesis of data
For example, if your hypothesis were The decline of the sea otter along Pacific shores has previously
been and still is largely due to human hunting, then you may look at historical records of sea otter
distribution and abundance as well as fur trade records. Your predictions may be If my hypothesis is
true, then the initial decline in sea otter abundance should coincide temporally with the beginning of
human hunting of otters and fur trade. If my hypothesis is true, then the declines would be heaviest in
the most heavily hunted regions.
3) Experiments:

Experiments are one of the most often used and frequently the best tests of you
hypothesis. When designing an experiment, you want to think about the appropriate
procedures, variables and controls. Here, well use as an example the hypothesis
Light availability affects the growth of radish plants.
Variables are the defined, measurable factors that may be important for your
hypothesis. The dependent variable is the factor that you want to question and
measure the response of in your test. The independent variable is the variable you
are manipulating in the test. Other variables that may affect your dependent variable
should be controlled variables they should be identical for all groups. By controlling
all other variables, we can ask whether it is the independent variable specifically
which leads to a response in the dependent variable.
For our example,
What is the dependent variable?
Plant growth
What is the independent variable?
Light
What are the controlled variables?

Because we suspect other variables may affect plant growth, we will

control Nitrogen, water, and plant density.
The Procedure of the experiment is the design and steps that you employ. To begin
with, you want to choose one or several levels of treatment, establish a control
group, and run several replications of each treatment/control.
For our example, we want to explore the effects of light
What levels of treatment should we use?
A good option would be to subject plants to varying degrees of
shading (decreased light). We may use three levels of treatment: 25%
light-reducing shading, 50% light-reducing shading, and 75% lightreducing shading.
What is our control group?
A plant near the shaded plants, but with no shading over it full light
How should we replicate?
We may choose to place 15 plants in each group and average the
growth results.
Based on this test, what would we predict if our hypothesis is true?
Our prediction would be: If the hypothesis is true, plants under shading will show
reduced growth compared to the plants in the control group. We might also predict
that plant growth is less in each successive level of treatment, from 0% shading to 75%
shading.
Step 5: Repeat the whole process

When you test your hypothesis, you may find that the hypothesis is not supported, or
you may make additional observations that lead you to modify your hypothesis. This
iterative nature is one of the keys to success when applying the scientific method.
You may also want to test several related hypotheses. For example, if your tests
support the hypothesis that light affects growth in radish, you may want to expand
your examination of plant growth by testing the other hypotheses we proposed. You
may also test for interactions of variables (eg maybe light only affects growth when
the plants have more than adequate water, but in water limitation, light has no
effect on growth).
For more on observations, hypotheses, and predictions:

Science and the Scientific method

Science is a framework for gaining knowledge of the world. Science is usually applied by following the scientific
method a set of procedures and practices. While the scientific method is often described as an inflexible
procedure, most scientists typically proceed with more flexibility and imagination. By using the scientific method,
scientists aim to reduce bias and subjectivity and discover accurate, consistent, non-arbitrary representations
about the natural world.
Science relies on available evidence, and is often corrected or improved if better evidence becomes available.
This self-correction keeps science honest and objective.

On the Limitations of Biological Knowledge

Abstract
Scientific knowledge is grounded in a particular epistemology and, owing to the requirements of
that epistemology, possesses limitations. Some limitations are intrinsic, in the sense that they
depend inherently on the nature of scientific knowledge; others are contingent, depending on the
present state of knowledge, including technology. Understanding limitations facilitates scientific
research because one can then recognize when one is confronted by a limitation, as opposed to
simply being unable to solve a problem within the existing bounds of possibility. In the hope that
the role of limiting factors can be brought more clearly into focus and discussed, we consider
several sources of limitation as they apply to biological knowledge: mathematical complexity,
experimental constraints, validation, knowledge discovery, and human intellectual capacity.
Keywords: Complexity, Gene regulatory networks, Epistemology, Experimental design, Genomics,
Knowledge discovery, Modeling, Validation.