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A presentation on information flow in living systems. Living systems are life forms (or, more colloquially known as living things) treated as a system. They are said to be open self-organizing and said to interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. Multiple theories of living systems ...
This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the other being physical science, which is concerned with non-living matter. Biology is the overall natural science that studies life, with the other life sciences as its sub-disciplines. Some life sciences focus on a specific type of organism.
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction.
All known living things are made up of one or more cells [13] All living cells arise from pre-existing cells by division. The cell is the fundamental unit of structure and function in all living organisms. [14] The activity of an organism depends on the total activity of independent cells. [15] Energy flow (metabolism and biochemistry) occurs ...
The classification of living things into animals and plants is an ancient one. Aristotle (384–322 BC) classified animal species in his History of Animals, while his pupil Theophrastus (c. 371 –c. 287 BC) wrote a parallel work, the Historia Plantarum, on plants. [7]
Physical science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the life sciences. However, the term "physical" creates an unintended, somewhat arbitrary distinction, since many branches of physical science also study biological phenomena.
A variety of living things serve as models in biological research, such as in genetics, and in drug testing. Until the 19th century, plants yielded most of the medicinal drugs in common use, as described in the 1st century by Dioscorides.
The term "organism" (from the Ancient Greek ὀργανισμός, derived from órganon, meaning ' instrument, implement, tool ', ' organ of sense ', or ' apprehension ') [2] [3] first appeared in the English language in the 1660s with the now-obsolete meaning of an organic structure or organization. [3]