Is Biology a real Science?

A level biology is very basic.
If you are having trouble with that, how will you cope with Vet ?
Vet is several orders of magnitude harder."

Not at all.

My memory of A level biology was that only the less able did it.
The would-be vets and doctors I knew avoided it and did the real sciences (chem, physics ) maths and further maths instead.

Vet has material is is far harder than basic A level biology.
I fail to understand how someone who cannot cope with so elementary a subject can seriously contemplate vet."

I fail to see how you can say chem is one of these 'real sciences', even to that degree physics. If at all if you had to class one science as the 'real' science then indeed it would be maths, as essentially everything can be attempted to be explained through mathmatic principals.

If by 'real science' you just mean 'harder science' then again I fail to see this presumption. As everyone is individual and what constitutes as 'real' or hard to paraphrase you is subjective. Example, I find chemistry easier then physics, is it safe to assume that chemistry is not as 'real' as physics?

If by saying that Biology is less 'real' by saying its more subjective as a subject, meaning there are more possable answers then say chemistry, maths or physics where (unless you go into quantum physics etc) there is always a clearly defined answer and method then let me put this forward - Life isn't always clearly defined. By this I mean to me Biology is one of the most relavent sciences to life, it has more pratical applications whereas other sciences have less pratical implications. To me this is reflected in the way its tested as there is always several different ways to treat things in medicine, thus emulated in the exam.

An example from this from another subject is Psychology. Now Psychology is a psuedo science (or quasi what ever you want to call it) as there is not a clearly defined answer. This is reflected in the open answer questions, structure essay responses. Now ask yourself what has more relavence on a day to day scale, Psychology or Maths? I think you would be hard pressed to explain schizoprhenia, or dissociative identity disorder through mathmatics principals. Im sure there is an answer in maths but we havent arrived at that stage yet, thus Psychology will do.

It seems to me these so called 'real sciences' don't effectively reflect real life, they lack humanity.

Well those would be my arguments against what you have said, take em or leave em, rip 'em to shreads or 'whatever'.

Biology only became a real science in the last hundred years (maybe fifty). If you define science as the collection of knowledge via the scientific method; this involves coming up with a theory and making falsifiable predictions from it. Then it's only recently that this has really started to happen in Biology (at least to the extent it happens in the other sciences).

Nothing from Biology AS really fits this definition of science though (maybe some of the gene stuff). AS Biology seems to merely documents creatures, organs and processes; a sort of reverse engineering of nature.

Interestingly by the same argument though this would mean maths isn't a science.

Nothing from Biology AS really fits this definition of science though (maybe some of the gene stuff). AS Biology seems to merely documents creatures, organs and processes; a sort of reverse engineering of nature.

maths is realistically useless for people who dont want to take it any further.
sorry my friend you will NEVER use modulus in ur LIFE while shopping in tescos.

chem again extremely useless unless u specifically go into chem eng, sorry folks u will NEVEr need to know the mass of invisible matter /no matter? in ur life.

physics - ...um .. hang on except for an engineer all others who do physics are strange , and frankly retarded because all they do is speculate about other dimensions and worm holes.

finally biology is the only real practical science that u can apply or use. it teaches u about anatomy most importantly which i will be dealing with directly as a vet , infections disease, metabolic processes its all good. okay maybe the plant stuff is ****e. but still.

so personally when med and vet entry demands chem and people find themselves having to take maths and chem i think its stupid.. u will never use them ever ever again so u just wasted 2 years of ur life.

education these days needs 2 things:

less bull-****
more hands on experience.

get a corpse and prep ur pre-med entries with intensive anatomy and disection, examine them on that and see who can cut it. dump the rest. if they fail stick them microbio or biomed seeing as how they wanted to pursue biology related field in the first place. much better than wasting ur time logging and solving stupid numbers.

Mathematics is a tool used in all the branches of science, without it... well it's pointless to talk about what would happen without it, as science as we know it wouldn't exist. Likewise, all the sciences are inter-related and without a proper understanding of chemistry, the biologists wouldn't have an understanding of cellular processes and it would be harder to engineer drugs and chemicals for doctors to use.

I can only assume it is plain ignorance on your part that you do not know the applications of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in the real world. I don't particularly care to enlighten you on that, I'm not entirely sure you'd understand.

maths is realistically useless for people who dont want to take it any further.
sorry my friend you will NEVER use modulus in ur LIFE while shopping in tescos.

chem again extremely useless unless u specifically go into chem eng, sorry folks u will NEVEr need to know the mass of invisible matter /no matter? in ur life.

physics - ...um .. hang on except for an engineer all others who do physics are strange , and frankly retarded because all they do is speculate about other dimensions and worm holes.

okay 3 2 1 GO , give me a practical application of the modulus function in tescos.

I'm a mathematician and a physicist, and I think this is a stupid thread.

Mathematics is NOT a science, anyone attempting to say it is the "purest" science is talking nonsense, mathematics does not use the scientific principle. The thing that defines a science is not whether it gives you a straight answer. The axiomatic formulation of mathematics ensures it can give you straight answers, but it cannot tell you anything about the way the universe works, which is ultimately what science is aiming to do.