34 HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SCIENCE 



from the beginning to the laws of chance, and containing no 

 evidences of design, even in their origin. " 20 



Aristotle, the greatest of all the Greek philosopher- 

 scientists, is especially interesting to the biologist, because 

 he has been called the father of zoological science. Taken as a 

 whole, his work represents the culmination of the scientific 

 genius of the Hellenic race. He was the first individual of 

 whom it is recorded that he took notes and collected books, 

 with a view to an encyclopaedic organization of existing knowl- 

 edge; he was also the first to definitely formulate the princi- 

 ples of deductive logic. He was the greatest systematizer 

 of knowledge that the ancient world produced, and was in 

 general the founder of most of the sciences which originated 

 in the ancient world. This in part accounts for the fact that 

 his works were looked upon as authoritative in science and 

 philosophy until modern times. It is no wonder that Dante 

 designated him as "the master of them that know." But 

 more than this, Aristotle possessed the mind of scientific 

 genius. 



Aristotelian philosophy, in opposition to the supernatural- 

 ism of Plato, was the philosophy of the concrete and partic- 

 ular substance or thing; and was, despite its coloring of 

 Platonic supernaturalism, the logical antecedent of modern 

 scientific realism. In his scientific conclusions, Aristotle 

 was influenced by his philosophical preconceptions, but the 

 fact that his dominant philosophy was realistic rendered this 

 influence of less significance. In biological science, he seems 

 to have been familiar with a large number of animals by 

 actual dissection, and to have possessed a factual knowledge 

 greater than any student of animal life until the period of the 

 Renaissance. He illustrates the Hellenic genius, on its 

 intellectual side, more completely than any one individual. 

 His works, in garbled and fragmentary form, constitute the 

 greatest single item in the philosophical and scientific legacy 

 inherited from the ancient world. In him was epitomized 



20 Osborn, H. F., "From the Greeks to Darwin," p. 68. 



