List of Auxiliary Sciences of Biology

The auxiliary sciences or auxiliary disciplines are those that, without fully devoting themselves to a specific area of ​​study, are linked to her and give her help, since its possible applications contribute to the development of said area of ​​study.

In the case of biology, a scientific discipline that is interested in the different forms of life in the known universe, it is common that it receives help from other experimental sciences, such as chemistry, with the purpose of broadening the perspectives with which this science approaches nature, thus giving rise to the biochemistry. For example: agriculture, statistics, computing.

However, it is common for biological research to also be allied with disciplines, Applied Science Y social Sciences that at first glance would not have much to do with your interests, but that provide you with tools materials, conceptual and theoretical to approach life in various fields and through approaches different.

Examples of auxiliary sciences of Biology

1. Chemistry. As we said, the collaboration of biology and chemistry yields biochemistry as a result: a discipline that is characterized by focusing its investigative and experimental efforts in the exclusive fields of organic substances and life forms, such as, for For example, the chemistry of the body's metabolic processes, the logic of the materials that make up the cell or that govern its processes, etc.
2. Geography. Since biology is concerned with life as a whole, and it necessarily occurs and thrives in a certain place and some given weather conditions, geography and its weather analysis tools or weather systems are helpful to you. zonal classification. In fact, terms like "biome" are the product of this overall look, which leads to biogeography.
3. farming. Botany, a branch of biology dedicated to the study of plants, exchanges no little information with agriculture and knowledge of planting, germination and food harvesting. In fact, remarkable agricultural advances have emerged from their collaboration that allow the development of more and more better food, or at least a greater degree of awareness about what is done and how it is done by sow.
4. Statistics. This branch of mathematics, in charge of calculating probabilities, provides biology with numerous calculation tools population, extremely useful to undertake the quantitative analysis of its results, as well as express them in a logical language verifiable. It is the best way to address ecosystems and biological populations.
5. Story. As in the case of other scientific disciplines, the historical perspective is key to understanding the evolution of a field of study in time and manage the context in which the great exponents of the same made and published their findings. On the other hand, what else is the theory of evolution than a history of life on the planet?
6. Linguistics. More precisely the philology and its handling of dead languages ​​and the history of the communication of our species, provides biology with useful nomenclatures for its taxa or classification groups of living beings. Thus, for example, the names of the species are written in Latin and gain a universal character.
7. computing. As in almost all experimental sciences, computing and its powerful data processing tools have become an indispensable ally. If to this we add the ability to software specialized and other forms of control and information management, it will be understood that two distant sciences Since biology and computing have been collaborating with each other for years (in fact, there is already talk of bioinformatics).
8. engineering. The mother of ingenuity, engineering, draws on theoretical sciences such as biology to be able to find solutions to its problems (applications) at the same time as provides innovative tools such as specialized machinery, devices designed for precise experiments and endless applications that grow an area of research.
9. Nanotechnology. There is apparently no area of ​​knowledge that cannot benefit from the deep handling of matter that nanotechnology offers. The manipulation of life at the molecular or subcellular level allows these two disciplines to offer new approaches to the biological problems of the man and different ecosystems, such as genetically modified bacteria to biodegrade plastic, viruses programmed to fulfill functions biological, etc.
10. Physical. Many branches of physics, such as electricity or quantum mechanics, are of interest to biology, which often uses these knowledge to explain organic processes or approach life from a more complex perspective, which takes into account factors from another nature.
11. Paleontology. The study of the creatures of the past cannot be entirely independent of the disciplines that deal with life, obviously. Collaboration between these disciplines is frequent and common, since their study areas serve the other to verify hypothesis, generate interpretations and address the past in a more informed way.
12. Medicine. The fields of study of medicine and biology are so narrow that at times they seem indistinguishable. Even so, the contributions of medicine on the understanding of the human body and those made by biology, allow the birth of disciplines such as the Technology of food, specialized study of the processes of nutrition and the manipulation of the alimentary matter for benefit of the human being.
13. Optics. The marvelous development of optics, a branch of physics that studies light and the processes to which it is susceptible, allowed the emergence of branches of biology such as microbiology: biology of the microscopic world, whose study would be impossible without the devices (microscopes) that allow to enlarge microscopic matter and study ecosystems invisible to the look.
14. Oceanography. Science specialized in the oceans often makes use of the study of life (in the sea), as can be the case in marine biology. This exchange is deeply nutritious for fishing life and marine ecology, as well as all the economic activities that man develops on the coasts, such as tourism. On the other hand, oceanography would not exist without the prior presence of biology (ichthyology).
15. Pharmacology. The study of toxins is due, to a large extent, to the analytical capacity of living beings endowed with them, such as poisonous animals, jellyfish, etc. However, this learning applied to the health of man (elaboration of antidotes, etc.) increases at the same time the knowledge we have about the substances of nature.
16. Logic. Biology, like other "hard" or exact sciences, is based on the steps of scientific method and in a reasoning model whose premises are clearly logically defined. This branch of philosophy gives biology the possibility of analyzing its own method of studying the reality that interests it.
17. Embryology. This science dedicated to understanding the birth of life, its initial stages and its development Specifically, it is somewhere in the middle between biology and medicine, so we list it separately. His discoveries are of equal value for both fields and often test theories about the origin of life on the planet and about the evolution of living beings.
18. Museology. Since many of the world's great museums are from natural Sciences, biology and museums collaborate closely in the dissemination of specialized knowledge, thinking about strategies to preserve the samples, develop informational tours, etc.
19. Librarianship. Experimental sciences such as biology are not alien to the accumulation of knowledge, far from it, and there the information sciences provide a specialized knowledge that orders, classifies and allows the retrieval of accumulated information, as well as its correct reference (bibliographies).
20. Technical drawing. This discipline, closer to engineering, architecture or graphic design, has its place among the tools of biology, on everything in botany, whose approach to, for example, the leaves of the different plant species requires some illustration and reproduction graph.

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