- published: 28 Apr 2016
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Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:
Subdisciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.
The term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, "life" and the suffix -λογία, -logia, "study of." It appears in German (as biologie) as early as 1791, and may be a back-formation from the older word amphibiology (meaning the study of amphibians) by deletion of the initial amphi-.