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Biology
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Electron micrograph of the rust mite Aceria anthocoptes
(Full-size Image)
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Note:
Various sources on the Internet state that the term biology was originated by
Treviranus, Lamarck, or Burdach in 1800, or shortly thereafter. However,the
German author Friedrich Bouterwek used the word considerably earlier, in his
Kleine Schriften philosophischen, ästhetischen und litterarischen Inhalts (1791).
It is also used by Theodor Georg August Roose in his
Grundzüge der Lehre von
der Lebenskraft ... (1797). So the word is actually a decade, at a minimum,
older than is generally supposed. It may have been produced by a shortening
of, or have been suggested by, the word amphibiology, which means the
study of amphibians (amphibiology occurs in its French form, amphibiologie,
as early as 1748 in
Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savans de l'Europe,
Volume 41).
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The word biology can have several different meanings:
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the scientific study of living things and vital processes. The field is composed of numerous subdisciplines, including such fields as zoology, botany, genetics, medicine, agriculture, anatomy, and histology.
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the rules, life processes, or phenomena relating to a particular organism or class of organisms (e.g., the ~ of plants).
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[syn. biota] The flora and fauna of a particular era, environment, geographic region, or biome, taken as a whole.
Synonyms: Life science; biological science.
Derivation: Gk. bios, meaning "life" + Gk logos meaning "explanation, law, theory, reasoning, or speech" (in modern usage within a scientific context, the suffix -logy can usually be taken as meaning "the study of").
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