Why take IB Physiology?
NST IB Physiology is arguably the core option for second year bionatscis:
falling between the cellular and the whole-organism levels, physiology occupies
a central position within the biological sciences.
Apart from being a fascinating subject in its own right, IB Physiology is an excellent partner to almost any other biological course, be it molecular, para-medical or whole animal.
You should always consult widely when trying to decide which courses to read. Your Director of Studies is best-placed to advise you, but you should also consider talking to your supervisors, and to current IB physiologists in your College.
But isn't 1B Physiology just the same as 1A PoO?
No!
More than half of the 1B course relates to topics that are not touched in 1A Physiology of Organisms, including reproductive physiology, exercise physiology and physiology in extreme environments.
The remainder does look at familiar organ systems, i.e. heart, kidneys, lungs, but in most cases concentrates on very different aspects of their function. Most students find the in-depth 1B treatment, focussing entirely on animal physiology and with a perspective which is more clinical than comparative, to be much more interesting and rewarding than the necessarily superficial overview presented in 1A.
Leave out the Physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject-matter would best develop his powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the deepest importance for his own and others' welfare; blind to the richest sources of beauty in God's creation; and unprovided with that belief in a living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through endless change and variety, which might serve to check and moderate that phase of despair through which, if he take an earnest interest in social problems, he will assuredly sooner or later pass...
Thomas Henry Huxley, 1854