Second Grade Biology
The branch of science known as biology can be further divided into several sub‐categories. These sub‐branches came about because as biologists studied living things, they developed specializations for the different living organisms or topics in biology. Since these sub‐branches were developed through years of study and experimentation, the history of biology is relatively long and dates back to the earliest of philosophers and civilizations.
Most of biology's history started with attempts at medicine and trying to answer questions about nature. Since it studied life of all different kinds and what affects it, biology became one of the more popular sciences for the old scientists. After all, the study of how we came to be and why our environment is the way it is are natural questions to be curious about and to try to answer.
Biology's history had a lot to do with learning along the way. If we take a look at the famous experiments and discoveries of biology, we find that it often took the scientists a long time to get to where they wanted to go. Many times, discoveries made along the pursuit of one topic leads to the opening up of more topics. The same can be said for the history of cells.
Robert Hooke's Cells
In the beginning, scientists were simply observing the various types of life and its characteristics. Through their observations and by combining previous studying, science was able to prove that every living organism must be made up of sub‐parts that support their life. Early scientists however focused on the concept of an atom or an indivisible unit. These atoms are supposed to make up living beings.
While the atom theory was later on proven to be true by physics, what scientists and early philosophers were really referring to was the idea of a cell, or a basic unit of life. According to records, it was Robert Hooke who first observed a cell. He saw a cork cell through a microscope and named it so because it reminded him of the tiny bedrooms monasteries had for their monks.
When he first chanced upon it, Hooke wasn't too sure what exactly it was he was looking at. He later on realized that this piece of cork was made up of hundreds of tiny cells. He decided to test other once living objects and then he moved on to living objects. Again he observed that these things were made up of the different little blocks, in different shapes and appearance, of course. This led him to believe throughinductive reasoning that many living things or once living things are also made up of small units or “blocks.”
Through Robert Hooke's discovery, the study of cells as blocks of life became a completely different branch of biology. Through persistent experimentation and observation, later scientists were able to see that there were internal actions within cells, and they later connected these internal actions to the life of the large organism itself. As the study of cell biology progressed, the cell theory, theorized by Theodore Schwann began to evolve. Through this theory, cell biology became the large branch of biology we know of today, and none of it would have been possible without Robert Hooke.
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