id author title date pages extension mime words sentences flesch summary cache txt en-wikipedia-org-1200 Biology - Wikipedia .html text/html 9233 1354 59 Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution.[1] Despite the complexity of the science, certain unifying concepts consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Lamarck believed that these acquired traits could then be passed on to the animal's offspring, who would further develop and perfect them.[20] However, it was the British naturalist Charles Darwin, combining the biogeographical approach of Humboldt, the uniformitarian geology of Lyell, Malthus's writings on population growth, and his own morphological expertise and extensive natural observations, who forged a more successful evolutionary theory based on natural selection; similar reasoning and evidence led Alfred Russel Wallace to independently reach the same conclusions.[21][22] Although it was the subject of controversy (which continues to this day), Darwin's theory quickly spread through the scientific community and soon became a central axiom of the rapidly developing science of biology. ./cache/en-wikipedia-org-1200.html ./txt/en-wikipedia-org-1200.txt