Coimbra, Portugal

Experimental Biology and Biomedicine

Biologia Experimental e Biomedicina

Table of contents

⇑Experimental Biology and Biomedicine at University of Coimbra

Language: Portuguese Studies in Portuguese
Subject area: biology
University website: www.uc.pt
Type: PhD/Doctoral programme
Academic degree: Doutor
Duration: 240 ECTS

⇑Definitions and quotes

Biology
Biology is the natural science that involves the study of life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical composition, function, development and evolution. Modern biology is a vast field, composed of many branches. Despite the broad scope and the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation of new species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis. See glossary of biology.
Biomedicine
Biomedicine (i.e. medical biology) is a branch of medical science that applies biological and physiological principles to clinical practice. The branch especially applies to biology and physiology. Biomedicine also can relate to many other categories in health and biological related fields. It has been the dominant health system for more than a century.
Biology
Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms. By pretending to a kind of knowledge that it cannot achieve, social science can only engender the scorn of natural scientists and the cynicism of the humanists.
Richard Lewontin (1995) "Sex, Lies, and Social Science" in New York Review of Books (4/20/95)
Biology
You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there.
David Brin, Glory Season (1993), chapter 5
Biology
What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology.
Francis Crick (1988) What Mad Pursuit
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