60 HERBERT ALBERT RATNER 



To understand the use and the goal of Grecian and Har- 

 vian comparative biology, two things should be understood. 

 First, that one has to seek out and know the many. Secondly, 

 that knowledge of the many which one has to seek out is the 

 " one in the many " — that which is common to the many, that 

 commonality which most fully accounts for why the thing is 

 as it is. 



To know the many, however, does not automatically result 

 in an answer. Modern science suffers from a plethora of the 

 many, because of the variety and the high output of sense 

 observations from our laboratories. The modern scientist is in 

 the position of Meno, who, in answer to Socrates' question. 

 What is virtue?, responds that " Every age, every condition of 

 life, young or old, male or female, bond or free, has a different 

 virtue: there are virtues numberless, and no lack of definitions 

 for them . . ." ^^ The modern scientist in the absence of the 

 Harvian answer would respond similarly to the question, 

 What is a heart .f*, that every species of animal has a different 

 heart: there are numberless hearts and numberless definitions. 

 But Harvey, following Socrates, prescinds from the many and 

 seeks what the heart is " in the universal . . . whole and sound, 

 and not broken into a number of pieces." ^® Harvey also follows 

 Aristotle, who formally discusses the method of obtaining defi- 

 nitions in his Posterior Analytics which, as part of the Org anon, 

 was part of Harvey's formal training in logic and scientific 

 methodology. 



Unlike the modern whose notion of causality is limited pri- 

 marily to the material and efficient causes, Harvey further 

 follows Socrates and Aristotle in seeking the fuller explanation 

 that comes with the additional knowledge of the formal and 

 final causes. 



Socrates in his last days recollects his rejection of this ancient 

 error of modem scientists when, as a young man, he, " with a 

 prodigious desire to know that department of philosophy which 



^^ Plato, Meno, 71 E-72 A (Jowett translation.) 

 "'Ibid., 77 A. 



