Poll: Is Biology A Science?

[Virgilthepagan]

Biology is a science, by the textbook definition that so many others have already posted, and also just by the process biologists follow to actually arrive at a conclusion.

A hypothesis is proposed, tested, and either proved or refuted, biologists are just as subject to this as anybody else.

 

[Halceon]

I have the misfortune of studying a horrible amalgam of fields. One of them is called linguistics and is a proper scientific field, the other is called literature science and is almost pure individual opinion. Together they form the abomination called philology.
I signed up for only half of it, can you tell?

 

[hermes]

Of course it is.
And it is also more of a science than psychology and sociology, since it doesn't use statistics to test its hypothesis.

 

[Pearwood]

Biology is soft science. It uses the scientific method with a subject that is kinda scientific. Only mathematics and physics are hard sciences.

Mathematics isn't a science... the four major sciences are chemistry, biology, psychology and physics. Mathematics is a tool used to further study in those sciences. You can argue that psychology is just a specific branch of biology, namely neuroscience and/or biochemistry but certainly not that biology isn't a science.

To give an example, the process of drinking alcohol:

You drink alcohol, ethanol in the liver is converted to acetaldehyde and then to acetic acid in a reaction that consumes water and causes the dehydration associated with hangovers. Acetic acid then reacts to form a reagent in the citric acid cycle called acetyl coenzyme A which is used in metabolism. In a lab you could find out how efficient each enzyme involved is, you could find out how long each metabolite lasts and which is the most toxic, you can determine the amount of alcohol the person drank, any number of things that have no relation to mathematics or physics yet are certainly scientific.

 

[Lukeje]

I've always seen Biology as a science (and I still do) but I will point out that you can read Biology as a BA which as far as I'm aware would suggest that there are enough aspects of Biology that are more humanitarian than scientific to fill a whole degree course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Arts

...the appropriate quote:

Bachelor of Arts (B.A. or A.B.), from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both.

(Emphasis my own).

Um...of course. Heck,look at the word itself! Bio-(Life) Logy-(Science of)
Science of life.

-logy means `study of'. Hence `theology' not being a science.

 

[ajemas]

Unless you think that every branch of medicine isn't a science as well, I'm pretty sure that it's a science. It definitely falls under the purview of the hard sciences. The concept of "purity" in the fields is just absurd. And, to paraphrase the alt-text same XKCD comic that she got it from "Physics is to Math as sex is to masturbation."

 

[Aardvark Soup]

The term 'science' is kind of vague and ambigious. According to some, math is not a science while according to others, math is the only science. It's a bit like art, really.

Anyway, I personally consider biology a science, since it involves acquiring information through observation and then interpreting it while adhering to the scientific method; just like physics.

 

[Fragged_Templar]

Biology is most certainly a science, even if mathematics is the queen of the sciences

 

[SckizoBoy]

Same deal at Trinity College, Dublin for most subjects. My current (although I fear that will be the case for not much longer) degree course is in medicinal chemistry, yet is studied as a BA (Mod).

Durham's like that too, I think. Anyway, woohoo, fellow MedChem-er (undergrad degree)! But god, I hated the genome lecturer, kept advertising his publications, the toad...

How come you're stopping progress? If you don't mind me asking.

 

[rutger5000]

For me science has always been the study to things that actual exist, and are not a product of human behaviour. Math is exluded from the logic, but otherwise it makes sense to me. This makes physics, chemistry, bioligy all sciences, but leaves things like economy as a silly past time.

EDIT: By the way I don't get your logic about biology not being a science. Just because it is based on another science doesn't make it less of a science it self. Chemistry could be completly explained and described with the use of physics, but it's just way too much work to do so.

 

[zontelfonzo]

biology == the study of life,
doesn't the fact that is a field of study constitute that is a science? So long as it is based on fact that is.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

I don't understand how ANYONE could classify Biology as an art. It's the study if life, basically. How it works, how it managed to evolve etc. How is this not science? Art is defined as an expression of emotions. How the hell does Biology allow you to express your emotions?

 

[Psy1402]

xkcd doesn't say that Maths and Physics are the only TRUE sciences, it says that all science is just 'applied (x).'

Sociology is applied Psychology which is applied Biology which is applied Chemistry which is applied Physics which is applied Maths.

 

[GeorgW]

Biology is science, ecology is not, just making that clear. For exaples, once it was said that all ravens are black. Then one day, a white one was seen, so they corrected it. This is not a scientific method, that is guesswork.

I missed this dicussion the first time around, and I want my say. Just so we know where am coming from, I am a behavioural ecologist investigating the meachanisms that determine host-choice decisions in parasitoid Hymenoptera. Ecology is a science, unfortunately the further away you get from Maths the less repeatable your experiments are; there is more variation and the same phenomena are less likely to occur twice. In a physics experiment everyone will observe the same thing, in a chemistry one most of the people will observe the same thing, and in a biology experiment a lower proportion of people will observethe same thing. This has nothing to do the science being soft and purely to do with the number of factors involved in the observation.
However, in ecology, unlike maths for example, what we study is highly observeable. And we can repeat our experiments until we discern which phenomena is the most likely to occur and what factors result in the different variations. Ecology is the culmination of this with most experiments taking years worth of data, as is similar for medicine, sociology or anthropology; while chemistry and physics have much faster turn-overs as they have less factors to consider and the time scale that their observations occur on at much shorter.

OT: One of my colleages, a mathetician working in the evolution department, is in fact using biological knowledge as both an art and a science. He is using mathematics, combined with the stochastic behaviour of bacteria (yes, bacteria behave), to predict and control fractal patterns in colonial expansion. He is then using the fractal patterns, and photos thereof, as part of his art portfolio.

Interesting to see this thread revived. It all comes down to your definition of science, and I feel that you need a certain level of precision for it to be science. As you said, there are just too many factors at play in ecology and other fields like it, and therefore I don't view it as science. It falls below my border of acceptance so to say. That's not to say that ecology is any less of a field, it's just different in a lot of ways and should have another definition. But that's just how I define it to myself, other people would of course define it differently. I just want to defend my position, cuz I realise I didn't present it so well the first time.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Someone thinking Biology isn't a science is laughable. Of course it is, it's one of most core sciences. And if Psychology is a science, then by God Biology is.

 

[SaberXIII]

Well, I can see how she might think that, as maths and physics are the two that cannot change at all in any way, shape or form....
But she is wrong.

 

[MFenix]

It is a very important science that we need but one I'd rather not study, I'd prefer to study chemistry or physics. (I'd rather study chemistry more but physics would be my 2nd choice.)

 

[ScoopMeister]

We have this discussion all the time in school. Half the class is on one side, and half is on the other. I'm on the side that it is not. I feel that a series of observations and guesses based upon them is not science. I'm of course not talking about all of biology as a field, but more about things like ecology and ethology. Biology is science, ecology is not, just making that clear. For exaples, once it was said that all ravens are black. Then one day, a white one was seen, so they corrected it. This is not a scientific method, that is guesswork. Maybe I'm just being ridiculous, but that's the way I feel.

I would just like to point out that the dictionary definition of science is 'The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.' if this doesn't blow your theory as to why certain aspects of biology do not constitute 'science' straight out of the water, then I don't know what does. Biology is, without question, a science.
Also, the word 'science' stems from the Latin, scientia (one of several variations of knowledge). What I'm getting at is, at its root, 'science' can literally be taken as the study of knowledge itself (although admittedly in a less modern sense), and could therefore encompass a much broader range of subjects than just 'biology' 'mathematics', 'physics' or 'genetics'.

 

[ironduke88]

Interesting to see this thread revived. It all comes down to your definition of science, and I feel that you need a certain level of precision for it to be science. As you said, there are just too many factors at play in ecology and other fields like it, and therefore I don't view it as science. It falls below my border of acceptance so to say. That's not to say that ecology is any less of a field, it's just different in a lot of ways and should have another definition. But that's just how I define it to myself, other people would of course define it differently. I just want to defend my position, cuz I realise I didn't present it so well the first time.

Ok, in the full knowledge that I can't change your opinion, and in the full understanding that you do not view ecology as less of a field for 'not being a science', I would like to suggest an alternative point for dicussion:

In physics, it can be seen that gravity acts and it can be seen that it doesn't in space; however, the exact mechanism by which gravity acts has not been proven rigourously. In other words, there may be a mechanism, which we do not comprehend, that explains the act of gravity but occurs in a completely different way to how we think it does. This hypothesis is currently untestable, and unprooven. Rather imprecise, shall we say.

However, in ecology, if I remove species X from a system, species Y, from the same trophic level, will reach "always" reach carrying capacity, in absence of predatory effects, due to a lack of competition for resources. This is a testable and repeatable hypothesis that we can explain from the metabolic level; without the need for hypothetical particles or anything that cannot be shown visibly or chemically. Does that not sound like a more valid scientific hypothesis than using something that uses a mechanism we cannot detect as an explanation.

I hope that this point has not been obtuse in anyway, I think perhaps your understanding of exactly what ecology is as a field is not as complete as to truely understand the processes that determine how organisms interact. Similar to how I do not have knowledge of chemistry past an A level standard. All I can say is that our opinions are highly biased, if you had an interest in ecology then you would probably think of it as a science. Similarly, if I was a physical chemist, I would probably think of it as a soft science at best.

I hope that I have not pressed this point in such a way as to be offensive.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I messed up in the exams. Really, really badly. Chances are that I'll fall under the threshold required to be able to repeat the year, and therefore, be forced to drop out. This is rather problematic, and I suspect that it will take me at least ten years to actually acquire a degree because of the sheer cost of it.

Ugh... damn... I had to repeat a year, and I thought that was bad enough. I kinda scraped by, since I just do not exam well, and the coursework was marked in such a draconian way where I went that finishing was a bloody miracle for me. In the end, I thought, I spent 5 yrs for this piece of fancy paper... on a subject I came to resent (sort of). Then I went and changed fields almost entirely. *sigh*

Thought about what you're going to do next much?