Poll: Is Biology A Science?

[spartan231490]

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.

My thoughts are not very nice, but I will try. Psychology and sociology, I can almost see being argued, although they are still conducted with scientific method and still produce repeatable quantitative results, so I cal them sciences, but I can see the argument.
However, chemistry, biology, ect, are very much true sciences and cannot be discounted.

Yes, they are based on physics, but you can study them in depth without studying the physics they are based on. Thats why people study these things instead of just studying physics.

Also, Math is not a science. There is no scientific discovery, or scientific method. Math is a very important language for science, but in and of itself, it is not a science because it has no inherent connection to the world around us and science is a study of the world around us. You need math to do any kind of advanced science, but mathematics can be used with completely imaginary scenarios and numbers, it has no inherent connection to the real world, so it isn't a science.

 

[similar.squirrel]

When the heck did this get necro'd?

 

[SckizoBoy]

When the heck did this get necro'd?

About ten hours ago... you can blame a certain person in Brighton, UK for whom a penny just dropped with regard to my labcoat of pure awesome. -_-

 

[similar.squirrel]

When the heck did this get necro'd?

About ten hours ago... you can blame a certain person in Brighton, UK for whom a penny just dropped with regard to my labcoat of pure awesome. -_-

You're the snappy entomologist, right? I was actually hoping to get in touch with somebody scientific. Had a great idea today..

 

[SckizoBoy]

You're the snappy entomologist, right? I was actually hoping to get in touch with somebody scientific. Had a great idea today..

'Snappy entomologist'? That's a new one... hmmm... I'll take it as a compliment.

Well... the 'snap' ain't here at the moment. *sigh*

 

[similar.squirrel]

You're the snappy entomologist, right? I was actually hoping to get in touch with somebody scientific. Had a great idea today..

'Snappy entomologist'? That's a new one... hmmm... I'll take it as a compliment.

Well... the 'snap' ain't here at the moment. *sigh*

'Snappy' in the well-dressed sense. What happened to the 'snap', though?

 

[SckizoBoy]

'Snappy entomologist'? That's a new one... hmmm... I'll take it as a compliment.

Well... the 'snap' ain't here at the moment. *sigh*

'Snappy' in the well-dressed sense. What happened to the 'snap', though?

Oh, you meant 'snappy' as in my labcoat? Thought you meant the style of my posts... (if there was any). Never mind...

Though, I don't think a labcoat like mine can ever be classed as 'snappy', so I wonder: how do you know how I dress? ... you spying on me?

 

[similar.squirrel]

'Snappy entomologist'? That's a new one... hmmm... I'll take it as a compliment.

Well... the 'snap' ain't here at the moment. *sigh*

'Snappy' in the well-dressed sense. What happened to the 'snap', though?

Oh, you meant 'snappy' as in my labcoat? Thought you meant the style of my posts... (if there was any). Never mind...

Though, I don't think a labcoat like mine can ever be classed as 'snappy', so I wonder: how do you know how I dress? ... you spying on me?

Teensy little cameras embedded in drosophilae. You track their genes, they track your jeans.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Teensy little cameras embedded in drosophilae. You track their genes, they track your jeans.

Hoho! I knew it... though I have foiled your plans, for I have the ultimate defence: robber flies! You'll never get anywhere near me *sneer* *sneer*

 

[ashiba27]

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.

 

[ironduke88]

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.

 

[SckizoBoy]

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.

The title of a degree has little bearing on things, I don't think, since at Oxbridge, everything studied at undergraduate level is awarded as a BA (except medicine). And at several institutions (even though no-one will deny it is a science) chemistry degrees are awarded as B/MChem instead of BSc/MSci which is just... odd.

 

[Demonio Penguino]

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

 

[Trololo Punk]

I'd say... yes..

 

[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.