Poll: Is Biology A Science?

[ShadowsofHope]

..Uhm, weird question much?

Of course Biology is a science. Anyone thinking otherwise obviously doesn't understand what science is, or how it works.

Edit: Also, sadly, this is the first time I have ever seen those two words in a question questioning the relationship between one another. Huh.

 

[messy]

Anyway. My girlfriend takes the XKCD stance

Is she a physicist or mathematician?

She has an pretty thorough understanding of physics. Most of which goes over my head completely [quarks, hadrons, strange, charmed..It all make equal sense to me. Namely, it doesn't, though I would like it to].

But is she a scientist, or a science advocate?

I know a lot about quarks and their flavors as well, but I'm not a physicist, I'm a chemist, and as of next week I'll be published in Science [http://www.sciencemag.org]. I am absolutely a scientist, regardless of what XKCD has to say about the purity of chemistry.

Even archeology is a science. Biology is certainly a science, a life science as opposed to a physical science, but a science nonetheless.

Dude what's your paper on? I'm a biochem undergraduate at the moment so I do come across the occasional chemistry literature.

 

[Shadesong]

So, rain's pretty wet today, huh guys?

 

[TWRule]

Philosophy of Science View:

The essence of modern science is research. This is constituted by three factors:

1) The presence of a ground plan (i.e. subscribing to a model of an objective world, subject to the same laws discovered in other disciplines).

2) Methodology (The scientific method, and use of necessary instruments/technology to experiment in a structured way which is bound by rigor/exactitude).

3) Institutionalization (Where activity is on-going, and naturally continues to specialize itself further and further into different departments - usually at a university or such).

Biology follows all of these criteria, and is thus a science.

The human sciences like psychology, sociology, etc, derive their exactness from their inexactness, ironically - because in a human science where so much is simply unquantifiable, you are less likely to be exact the more you dissect and quantify. But they are still sciences, given that.

 

[Scabadus]

Ahhh, that XKCD strip. Still makes me laugh when I think about it; I was almost unable to function on the day it was first written. It was slightly unfortunate that I'm a biologist and my dad's a mathematition though, lots of teasing when he found it.

I can sort of see what your girlfriend's saying. Lemme put this in context: I'm studying microbiology an University, which is a highly chemical based part of biology. Some aspects really are little more than chemical reactions that happen to take place inside cells almost by coincidence, other courses acknowledge that these processes play a small part in keeping a bigger organism alive.

However macrobiology, stuff such as surgery, may blur the line (I really hope my friend doesn't read this and kick my ass before finishing it, he's training to be a surgeon). It moves away from traditional 'science' in labs and testtubes, also leaving little room for experimentation and error since when you try something new, you likely kill someone. However, it does follow the scientific method of observing a thing and seeing what happens when you change one part before attempting to explain that and, for surgery, fix it. It's just that seeing that someone's liver has fallen off and needs a few stitches doesn't need a microscope, which makes some people believe it isn't a science.

 

[ghostsprite9]

I hope it is as i'm studying it for A level.

But my view is that i believe biology is a science. It might be a bit silly (and just glorified chemistry/physics) but i still believe that you can study anything really.

Science comes from latin "scienta" meaning knowledge (thanks Google)(also said before). So technically anything could be a "science" so to speak (within reason).

But isn't biology like the study of life?
If so then yes it is a science. But maths and physics are the "pure" sciences, definatly.

(Also thank god the the anonymity of the internet, while my chemistry teachers make jokes about biology. My biology teachers would have my head for saying its glorified chemistry)

 

[Fearzone]

I figured it was either a physics major or a Creationist who wrote the topic, and while I'm glad to see it is the former, I have a much more colorful answer if it were the latter and one that doesn't involve any religion bashing.

But ok it's the former. Your girlfriends opinion if flat out measureably incorrect. By the agreed upon definition of the scientific method, ecology and general biology qualify by collecting data through repeatable measurement in an attempt to disprove the null hypothesis. That's what biologists do.

Now it's not an exact science which may be more philosophically distasteful to your girlfriend who prefers the abstraction of mathematical precision, but exact sciences are not the only science.

 

[Trolldor]

Discaimer: I think it is.

Anyway. My girlfriend takes the XKCD stance, whereby she claims that mathematics and physics are the only 'true' sciences, and that all aspects of biology are more akin to an art. Strangely, she seems to think that genetics is exempt, but things like ecology and taxonomy definitely do not fall within the realm of science.
She thinks the same applies to psychology and sociology, though I'd be inclined to agree sometimes, given that those subjects don't deal with phenomena that are immediately or easily quantifiable.

I agree insofar as all biology has a chemical basis, and all chemistry has a physical basis, but still. The systematic study of any phenomena, to me, is a science. We could study anatomy in terms of physics [biophysics dabbles with this], but it seems inherently ridiculous to discredit an entire branch of science because it uses a different set of vocabulary.

Thoughts?


EDIT: Be civilized. I don't appreciate anybody being called an idiot, much less somebody I'm close to. I was asking for an opinion regards this specific question, not my choice of partner.

Tell her to explain evolutionary mechanics purely through physics and mathematics then.

 

[anian]

Art? Why is biology art? Is knowing and observing division of cells an expression of inner feelings? Is any of it an expression of individuals through their works, would fish breathe with lungs if a certain biologist thought it'd be fun to say that it does?!
If anything, genetics might be the one aspect of biology it that comes close (and in the future perhaps it will be) art, when the science will serve only as a tool for expressing yourself.

I mean besides the lab coats, the systematics and logical conclusion along with scientific and organised observations of nature, of living organisms...well let me repeat this:

Philosophy of Science View:
The essence of modern science is research. This is constituted by three factors:

1) The presence of a ground plan (i.e. subscribing to a model of an objective world, subject to the same laws discovered in other disciplines).

2) Methodology (The scientific method, and use of necessary instruments/technology to experiment in a structured way which is bound by rigor/exactitude).

3) Institutionalization (Where activity is on-going, and naturally continues to specialize itself further and further into different departments - usually at a university or such).

Biology follows all of these criteria, and is thus a science.

The human sciences like psychology, sociology, etc, derive their exactness from their inexactness, ironically - because in a human science where so much is simply unquantifiable, you are less likely to be exact the more you dissect and quantify. But they are still sciences, given that.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Discaimer: I think it is.

Anyway. My girlfriend takes the XKCD stance, whereby she claims that mathematics and physics are the only 'true' sciences, and that all aspects of biology are more akin to an art. Strangely, she seems to think that genetics is exempt, but things like ecology and taxonomy definitely do not fall within the realm of science.
She thinks the same applies to psychology and sociology, though I'd be inclined to agree sometimes, given that those subjects don't deal with phenomena that are immediately or easily quantifiable.

I agree insofar as all biology has a chemical basis, and all chemistry has a physical basis, but still. The systematic study of any phenomena, to me, is a science. We could study anatomy in terms of physics [biophysics dabbles with this], but it seems inherently ridiculous to discredit an entire branch of science because it uses a different set of vocabulary.

Thoughts?


EDIT: Be civilized. I don't appreciate anybody being called an idiot, much less somebody I'm close to. I was asking for an opinion regards this specific question, not my choice of partner.

Tell her to explain evolutionary mechanics purely through physics and mathematics then.

Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

 

[captaincabbage]

Of course it's a bloody sciense! That's completely mental, to think it's anything other than science.
I really don't mean to be rude, but your girlfriend is being stupid if she thinks it's not sciense.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Discaimer: I think it is.

Anyway. My girlfriend takes the XKCD stance, whereby she claims that mathematics and physics are the only 'true' sciences, and that all aspects of biology are more akin to an art. Strangely, she seems to think that genetics is exempt, but things like ecology and taxonomy definitely do not fall within the realm of science.
She thinks the same applies to psychology and sociology, though I'd be inclined to agree sometimes, given that those subjects don't deal with phenomena that are immediately or easily quantifiable.

I agree insofar as all biology has a chemical basis, and all chemistry has a physical basis, but still. The systematic study of any phenomena, to me, is a science. We could study anatomy in terms of physics [biophysics dabbles with this], but it seems inherently ridiculous to discredit an entire branch of science because it uses a different set of vocabulary.

Thoughts?


EDIT: Be civilized. I don't appreciate anybody being called an idiot, much less somebody I'm close to. I was asking for an opinion regards this specific question, not my choice of partner.

I think she is a bit confused. Mathematics, for instance, isn't a science. It is a construct that helps us to quantify the world. Science is a philosophy for studying things, not a structure for measuring them.

You USE math to come up with the solution to something. When you make a hypothesis in science, you use MATH to check if it works out, by measuring the actual result.


As for is biology not a science? Well, I guess what is really meant is 'Can we study biology scientifically?' and the answer is of course yes. You can, and people often do. It is how we know so many things .

(Captcha: pages typedin ... that's actually an almost grammatically correct phrase!)

 

[Digital_Hero]

I apologize, because I did read your disclaimer, but I do believe your girlfriend is thinking something quite silly.

I think this mostly because she thinks genetics "are exempt" which is quite wrong

What about the study of viruses? They ARE biological in nature, and people do perform scientific acts with them. Granted they are genetic experiments, but still experiments done by scientists nonetheless.

I think i've lost my point somewhere in all of that, but I do believe she is wrong in her statement.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Biology is what you do when dont have the maths for real science. (a free cookie to whoever names the quoter).

Without Biology we wouldn't have disease resistant crops and alot of people would have died from simple infections if Penecillin werent discovered.

 

[constantcompile]

Anyway. My girlfriend takes the XKCD stance, whereby she claims that mathematics and physics are the only 'true' sciences, and that all aspects of biology are more akin to an art. Strangely, she seems to think that genetics is exempt, but things like ecology and taxonomy definitely do not fall within the realm of science.

Disclaimer: I can - sort of - see where she's coming from. At the same time, I think she's wrong.

The scientific method is very nearly the "truest" definition of science I can think of. You control all inputs in an experiment, you change a single factor, you watch what happens. No matter what subject you use the scientific method in, if you use it, you are performing science.

What do mathematics, physics, and genetics have in common? You can control all of the inputs, without question. When you can't control the inputs, you're basically playing a numbers game; hoping that the change in a single variable, even if the others aren't controlled, will be significant enough to produce a statistically significant result.

Statistics is very messy. I completely understand how purists would be inclined to be skeptical of any statistical evidence. That said, it's pretty much all we've got right now. To ignore or discredit the "soft sciences" - sciences that rely on statistical and circumstantial evidence to show relationships and test hypotheses - because the inputs cannot be controlled with certainty is to completely ignore how the world works when it isn't on paper; it is a huge disservice to oneself and society.

Do I think that Biology is literally a science? No. Do I think that it should be regarded, treated, and called a science? Yes. Words are words. After studying Biology, I've gotten a better sense of how meaningless the legal terms and verbiage we use actually are in reality. Words are means to an end, and given how broken and messy our language is, I think discrediting a subject due to a verbal technicality would be extraordinarily stupid.

(To be clear, I don't think you are discrediting Biology by asking this question.)

 

[crudus]

It has laws, theories, and researchers using the scientific method. How does that not make it a science?

The way I see it - if you get to wear a lab coat, you're doing science.

Spoiler: teehee

 

[frago roc]

Anyone who thinks that biology is not a science simply does not know what science is. I won't go as far as calling them "idiots," but their lack of insight into my degree major is troubling. They just see biology as hard facts they have to memorize, but biology is much much more than what you receive in high school. Science is about discovery, and to be honest I never heard anyone refer to math as a science - there is no scientific method, therefore no science. Pz out.

 

[Harveypot]

I thought it was just a fact cos biology is taught in science or by science teachers in most schools i know of so um... yeah.

 

[Shycte]

Give her a dictionary, so she may look up the word and then go back to the kitchen. Damn women. We gave them the right to vote and this how they repay us? Madness!

[small]I may or may not be joking[/small]