by Tami Port MS

Created on: June 30, 2009   Last Updated: July 29, 2009

Science is a tool; a special way of investigating a question. When scientists try to reveal the answers to questions about the world around us, they use a special process called the scientific method. The steps of the scientific method help ensure that bias-personal beliefs, hidden agendas, and just plain sloppy investigation-doesn't influence scientific results.

Although the scientific method may not be a riveting topic for many, there are certainly many very cool scientific disciplines to study. When I went to school for my science degrees, my aim was to become a primatologist; a scientist, like Jane Goodall and the late Diane Fossey, who studies the biology and behavior of moneys and apes; as well as those well-known hairless apes, humans.

Hard Science and Soft Science

Don't worry. If you are interested in becoming a scientist, but primates aren't your thing, there are plenty of other -ologies out there. Scientific disciplines are divided into the hard sciences and the soft sciences. Although the boundary between the two is not always distinct, the hard sciences are those disciplines that are more quantitative (based on measurement) and objective (less colored by personal belief). For example, psychology (the science of mental life) is considered a soft science, whereas neurology (the study of brain anatomy and function) is a hard science. Here is a brief glossary of the main branches of hard science, each of which contains many dozens of specific subdisciplines.

Disciplines of Hard Science

* Astronomy: The study of matter in outer space, with emphasis on the positions, dimensions, distribution, motion, composition, energy, and evolution of celestial bodies and phenomena (like planets, stars, comets, galaxies, black holes, etc).

* Biology: The study of living organisms. There are many, many subdisciplines to this science, including cell biology, microbiology (microbes), zoology (animals), botany (plants), genetics (genes), immunology (the immune system), ecology (relationships between organisms and their environment), just to name a few.

* Chemistry: The science of matter; branch of the natural sciences that deals with the composition of substances (atoms, molecules and compounds) and their properties and reactions.

* Geology: This is the science of the solid and liquid matter that makes up the Earth. Geology includes also several subdisciplines, such as climatology, vulcanology (volcanos), oceanography, paleontology (fossils), glaciology (glaciers), and gemology.

* Mathematics: This is a group of related sciences that use an abstract representational system to deal with the logic of quantity, shape and structure, and the relationship between these concepts. If you can count your fingers, you are doing simple mathematics, but the field is much more complicated than counting.

* Physics: The branch of science that pursues the study of properties and interactions of space, time, matter and energy.

Can't make up your mind? Don't worry, there are also branches of science that are a mix of more than one discipline, such as Geochemistry, Biochemistry, Astrophysics and Geophysics. Whatever your interest, there is probably and -ology for you.

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