Aristotle 53 



of the body by the furnace of the heart under the action of the 

 bellows of the lung. He formally rejected the older views of 

 Diogenes of Apollonia, of Alcmaeon of Croton, and of the 

 Hippocratic writings, that placed the seat of sensation in the 

 brain. 1 He failed to trace any adequate relation of sense 

 organs and nerves to brain. He considered that the spinal 

 marrow served to hold the vertebrae together. 



In general we may say that his physiology is on a much 

 lower plane than his natural history, since in dealing with 

 physiological questions he always seems to have in mind 

 the body as a whole and seldom pauses for any detailed 

 investigation of a particular part. The physiological views of 

 Aristotle were far from being fully accepted even by the 

 generation which followed him. There was already growing 

 up a school of physiologists whose work culminated five 

 centuries later in that of Galen, where we find quite other 

 views of the bodily functions. It is these views which we 

 may take as more typical of the bases of Greek physiology 

 (see p. 66). 



In much of the Aristotelian material that we have discussed 

 we have seen the development of a class of interests very foreign 

 to those of the modern biologist, in whose work the general 

 discussion of the ultimate nature and origin of life seldom plays 

 a large part. The business of the modern biologist is mainly 

 with vital phenomena as he encounters them and he is not 

 concerned with the deeper philosophical problems. The man 

 of science considers a part of the Universe where the philo- 

 sopher makes it his business to regard the whole. With 

 Aristotle this modern scientific process of taking a part of 

 the sensible Universe, such as a particular group of animals 

 or the particular action of a particular organ, and considering 

 it in and by and for itself without reference to other things, 

 had not yet fully emerged. Philosophy and science are still 



1 De partibus animalmm, ii. 10. 



