Biology

[potterfan3]

My chemistry teacher says biology isn't a science. Is this true and why.

[gen2]

Yes, Biology is a science. What your chemistry teacher means is that it does not follow exact rules and laws like chemistry and physics do.

In physics, if you shine a ray of light through a prism it will be refracted in a particular way and every time it is repeated, the light will do exactly the same thing. Furthermore, laws can be derived that enable accurate predictions of what will happen when light passes through a different prism.

In chemistry, the same can be said about how molecules and atoms interact.

In biology, animals do not behave in such rigidly predictable ways and much of biology uses statistacal analysis to make predictions. That does not stop it being a science. Scientific methods are applied to investigations. Furthermore, there is quite an overlap between many branches of biology and both chemistry and physics.

[kempie]

Google "life science"

[snook]

Excellent answer, gen2!

[alphamale]

If you ask the biology teacher then he/she will probably say that chemistry is not a science - they just might be pulling your leg. They both want you in their classes as this helps their pay/prestigue.

[jake-the-peg]

He's probably just upset about what Ernest Rutherford (the "discoverer of the atom" ) said about chemistry

He said "all science is either physics or stamp collecting"

Or maybe he's upset about what Pauli (Another great Physicist and Nobel prize winner) said

On learning his wife had left him he said "If she'd left me for a bullfighter I would have understood..but for a Chemist!!???"

I guess chemists pick on Biologists, Physicists pick on Chemists - Perhaps Mathematicians pick on physcists - but nobody can understand a word they say so we'll probably never know! :c)

[mrbatfink]

You can do a scientific study on just about anything you can dream up (including dreams).

Biology is a scientific study of living things..and hence a science... Just as domestic science is the study of cooking.

A science yes.... but not a 'pure' science like physics and chemistry.

[jimmer]

Well now, the teacher could mean this in a couple of ways

as jake suggests, a reductionist view of science is that biology is basically chemistry applied to living organisms. The chemistry teacher may be joking that biology is just a sub-branch of chemistry.

He may be a creationist and disagree with the values of evolutionary biology.

either way he is wrong.

jim

[Gef]

Teacher is an idiot.

[darkmatter]

Of course biology is a science for all the reason noted above and more...

Teacher's aren't experts at everything, not even the subjects that they teach

those who can....