Of all the science classes required throughout primary and secondary school, most students seem to like biology the best. Maybe, dealing as it does with such familiar things as plants, animals, and human beings, the popularity of biology has to do with its clear relevance to their life — or more to the point, to life itself. But any biology-loving youngster who decides to go take their studies more deeply into their favorite subject must sooner or later make a difficult choice: what kind of biology will they focus on? Biophysics, cellular biology, ecology, environmental biology, biomechanics, molecular biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology… the list seems endless.
So instead of looking at the world of biology as a list, why not look as it as a map? Domain of Science, the Youtube channel previously featured here on Open Culture for their map of mathematics, map of physics, map of chemistry, and map of computer science, have just recently put together one for biology, a video tour of which appears above.
It begins with “the most basic unit in the foundation of all life,” the cell, continues on to molecular, chemical, and physical processes, then to genes, populations, anatomy, the immune system, genetic engineering, paleontology, and even the search for life in outer space, with many other stops along the way besides.
“If there’s one word that describes biology, it’s complexity,” says series creator and narrator Dominic Walliman. “There’s a huge amount we still don’t understand about how life works, how it started, and how it ended up with intelligent apes like us who are able to look back and try and work out. I feel like we’ll be making new biological discoveries for many, many years to come.” Encouraging words for those students now considering going into one of the many biological sciences, although they’ll still have to decide exactly which biological science to go into — bearing in mind how many of those subfields have yet to emerge. It doesn’t take that intelligent an ape to understand that, before long, biology’s going to need a bigger map.
You can purchase Domain of Science‘s maps as posters here.
Related Content:
The Map of Mathematics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together
The Map of Physics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Physics Fit Together
The Map of Chemistry: New Animation Summarizes the Entire Field of Chemistry in 12 Minutes
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
where there is life, that is where biology comes into play, I agree with that quote