Life science is the scientific study of living organisms. It is, with physical science, one of the two branches of natural science. As such, it covers many fields, whether they are focused on a specific type of life (animals, plants, microorganisms) or on a particular aspect common to many life forms (genetics, epigenetics, anatomy, metabolism …). As any kind of science, it has a single goal: to improve knowledge. Of course, this knowledge can in turn help to improve our lives, and in particular our health. But let's make it clear that life science is not health science: it is much more than that. That's why I'm usually a bit upset when I see, in almost every “life science” grant application I review, the description of some tentative medical outcomes to justify the project. Life science is worth by itself, and it doesn't have to always cure diseases. But the confusion is usual, unfortunately even in the editorial world, as testified for instance from these lines extracted from the presentation of a journal: “Life Sciences is an international journal publishing articles that emphasize the molecular, cellular, and functional basis of therapy.”
Formerly known as natural philosophy or natural history, life science became “biology” (from the Greek bios, “life” and -logia, “study of)” in the 1800's (Ghilarov, Citation1998; Stafleu, Citation1971). Listen to Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck: “It is the singular and really admirable bodies I have just mentioned that were given the name of living bodies; and the life they have, and the faculties they get from it, essentially distinguish them from other bodies of nature. They offer themselves, and in the various phenomena they present, the materials of a particular science that is not yet established, that does not even have a name [ … ] and to which I give the name of Biology” (Lamarck, Citation1815).
Life science (sometimes named life sciences to recall its plurality) is paleontology as well as pathology, marine biology as well as human biology, ecology as well as epidemiology, botany as well as toxicology. It is indeed a vast and eclectic field composed of many branches commonly delimited by the scale of observation (e.g. molecular vs cellular biology), the kinds of organisms studied (e.g. zoology vs botany), the methods used (biophysics vs bioinformatics), the time scale considered (developmental biology vs evolutionary biology). So many frontiers to explore …
References
- Ghilarov, A. 1998. Lamarck and the prehistory of ecology. Internatl Microbiol 1:161–164.
- Lamarck. 1815. Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres.
- Stafleu, FA. 1971. Lamarck: the birth of biology. Taxon, 20(4): 397–442. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1218244