Why study biology? Let’s answer that question with another question. Have you ever been sitting in class and wondered, “Why do I have to know this? What does it matter?” Biology is one subject for which that answer is easy.
Biological science is literally everywhere and everything. As a living being, you are part of biology. So if you want to know how a human body functions, as well as every other living organism, biology is how you find out. It’s the best and truest way to understand the world around you.
More than just that, though, biologists serve a really important function in helping us live, thrive, and survive, and there are tremendous benefits to working in biology. Read on to find out more about why this could be the subject and career path for you.
What is biology?
Hopefully, you have some idea how to answer this question since your high school general biology class was likely required to graduate. But in case you were asleep that day, how about a definition?
Alane Lim, writing on LiveScience, puts it this way: “Biology is the study of life. In general, biologists study the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of living organisms.”
Biology is one of the big subjects that form the building blocks of everything we understand when it comes to natural science, along with chemistry and physics. Since we have established that modern biology covers every living organism, you can imagine it’s an expansive field with many subdisciplines.
There are numerous ways to break down the different areas of biology, but Lim gives us a good place to start with four major branches:
- “Biochemistry: The study of the chemical processes that take place in or are related to living things;
- Ecology: The study of how organisms interact with their environment;
- Genetics: The study of how genes are passed down by parents to their offspring, and how they vary from person to person;
- Physiology: The study of biological processes, such as how a particular organ works, what its function is, and how it's affected by outside stimuli.”
Other key areas within biology include cell biology, environmental biology, evolutionary biology, marine biology, molecular biology, and of course, medical biology.
If you do plan to study biology, you likely have some other big questions about how it looks in a college setting. Be sure to check out our guides, “Is biology hard as a major?” and “Biology BA vs BS: What's the Difference?”
Why study biology? Why is biology important?
If telling you that this is the study of ALL LIFE isn’t enough to convince you that biology is important, it may not be entirely possible. But let’s keep going, just to make it a little more manageable to think about.
In his blog on Medium, James Right helpfully gives six of what he says are the most important reasons to study biology:
- “Biology helps us know, understand nature
- Benefits to humans
- Role in medicine
- The life of biology is research
- Environment and biology
- Biology helps us understand our bodies and the changes occurring in them”
Biology is also a key connection point for the other sciences. Knowing general biology is more than just useful, it’s vital to understanding the other scientific disciplines.
Jonathan Visick, professor of biology at North Central College, said, “Science majors, of course, need to know biology (because) there are many overlaps with biology in other science fields. For example, students in other science majors could wind up working in neuroscience (which combines psychology and biology, bioinformatics and medical informatics (biology and computer science), ecological modeling or epidemiology (math and biology), biophysics, biomedical engineering, or pharmacology (biology and chemistry).”
One similar field to biology is physiology, but there are key differences between them. If you’re trying to choose between biology and another field, you can read our guides “Physiology vs Biology” and “Biology vs Chemistry Majors” for help.
