Biology is the science of life, but everyone knows about this, just as they know that biology is considered the most important of the sciences, since, among other living organisms, it studies you and me. Confucius would say in this regard: “a noble man studies the science that studies himself, but an insignificant man neglects it.” And I would be right a thousand times over. Biology has a very unusual history. On the one hand, humanity began to accumulate knowledge about living nature from the moment of its appearance. The first people already understood botany and zoology - they knew which plants were edible and which were not, and studied the habits of animals in order to hunt them. On the other hand, biology emerged as a separate science only at the beginning of the 19th century, when scientists finally drew attention to the fact that all living things have something in common, a number of common properties and characteristics. About what distinguishes living from non-living, about This book will tell you how life appeared and much more.