James Evans Jr., age 12, of Greenville, Miss., for his question:
WHAT ARE THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES?
Biological sciences are often called life sciences. This area of science is involved with the study of living organisms and their activities.
Biological sciences include botany, zoology, paleontology and. psychology.
Botany, the study of plants, and zoology, the study of animals, are both concerned with collecting, naming, classifying, examining and describing all living things.
Plants and animals have many characteristics in common, so botany and zoology may be combined as biology. Biologists do not merely describe how living things look and act. They try to learn how and why organisms act as they do.
Botany and zoology may be divided into several main fields, each of which can be further subdivided. Morphology, for example, is the study of the structure of organisms, and it includes anatomy, the study of living things; histology, the study of tissues; cytology, the study of cells: and embryology, the study of the development of organisms.
Paleontology is the study of prehistoric plants and animals. Paleontologist s investigate fossils, or the remains of prehistoric organisms that have been preserved in rocks. They work with geologists to re create a picture of the earth in prehistoric times.
Paleontologists have found evidence of the gradual change in the form of animal and plants throughout the earth's history.
Psychology is concerned with the behavior of man and animals. Psychologists study how the nerves and the brain work. They may investigate how animals react to certain situations or how children learn.
Psychologists also try to find the effects that conditions in the body have on various mental reactions. They may work with medical scientists to study the causes of mental and nervous diseases. some psychologists study the behavior of people in groups.
Another biological science that falls within the botany and zoology area is taxonomy. This involves the classification of living things.
Physiology studies how the bodies of plants and animals function, and this is another important subdivision in the botany and zoology area. Medical scientists often work in the area of physiology to study what happens when the body does not function properly.
Other areas of biology include genetics, the study of heredity, and ecology, the study of the relation of organisms to their environment.
Some botanists and zoologists specialize in only certain kinds of plants or animals. For example, bacteriology is the study of bacteria and ornithology is the study of birds.
A scientist is interested mainly in events that can happen again. By repeating an experiment, a measurement, or an observation, a scientist helps find the cause of an event. The scientist may change one part of the experiment slightly when repeating it. What happens to the result of the experiment helps him discover more about how the whole experiment works.