MEDICAL BIOLOGY, HUMAN ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY - Ya.I. Fedonyuk 2010

INTRODUCTION

MEDICAL BIOLOGY

Biology, Medical Biology: Subject Matter, Objectives, and Methods

Biology (from Greek bios – life, and logos – science) is the science of life. This term was first introduced in 1802 independently by the French scientist J.B. Lamarck and the German scientist G. Treviranus. The Subject Matter of biology is Life as a special form of matter existence in all its manifestations and at all Levels of biological Organization. The objects of biological study include All living organisms: Viruses, Bacteria, Fungi, plants, animals, and the human Organism as a biological entity. Biology investigates their Structure, functioning, development, distribution, as well as interrelationships among themselves and with the environment. The primary objective of biology is to study the regularities of vital activity in organisms in order to regulate these processes. Biology is metaphorically referred to as the number-one science. Its advancements are tied to solving global challenges—food, environmental, and space issues, combating disease pathogens, and ensuring the very existence of humanity on Earth. To achieve these objectives, biology employs a comprehensive set of Methods, the principal ones being descriptive, comparative, historical, and experimental. The historical method was established in science by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882).

Along with physics and chemistry, biology belongs to the natural sciences, meaning sciences that study nature. The difference between them is that physics and chemistry study inanimate nature, whereas biology studies living nature. Modern biology is a complex of sciences concerning living nature, each having its own object, subject matter, and Research Methods. Depending on the object of study, two main branches emerged in biology: botany and zoology. Within botany, several independent disciplines developed, such as phycology (The Study of Algae), dendrology (the study of woody plants), and phytopathology (the study of plant diseases and their pathogens). The Prerequisites for the emergence of botany as a science included human observations of plants, apothecary gardens, botanical gardens, and the invention of herbarium preparation techniques. Botany finally took shape as a science in the 18th century when the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus created a Classification of plants and animals (1735), introducing binomial nomenclature (a dual-name system for species). There are also numerous zoological disciplines: protistology (the study of Protozoans), arachnology (the study of arachnids), entomology (the study of insects), and zooparasitology (the study of parasitic animal diseases and their pathogens). The invention of the Microscope marked the beginning of microbiology (the study of microorganisms). Depending on the subject of research, disciplines such as systematics (the study of organism classification), anatomy (structure), physiology (regularities of functioning), Embryology (embryonic development), genetics (heredity and variation), ecology (the interrelationships of organisms and their communities with each other and the environment), and others have emerged.

Medical biology is the science that investigates the biological regularities of human vital activity. It explores the same issues as general biology, but specifically in relation to humans, taking into account their biosocial nature. The patterns of Human Development as an individual and of human society as a whole are studied by sociological sciences.