Biology

Biology, the science of life. The term was introduced in Germany in 1800 and popularized by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck as a means of encompassing the growing number of disciplines involved with the study of living forms. The limits of the science, however, have always been difficult to determine, and as the scope of biology has shifted over the years, its subject areas have been changed and reorganized. Today biology is subdivided into hierarchies based on the molecule, the cell, the organism, and the population.
Molecular biology, which spans biophysics and biochemistry, has made the most fundamental contributions to modern biology.Cellular biology is closely linked with molecular biology. To understand the functions of the cell—the basic structural unit of living matter—cell biologists study its components on the molecular level.Biology also includes the study of humans at the molecular, cellular, and organismal levels.The boundaries and subdivisions of biology, however, are as fluid today as they have always been, and further shifts may be expected.