WILLIAM HARVEY, M. D. 61 



is called the investigation of nature: to know the causes of 

 things, and why a thing is " " registers his disappointment after 

 being directed to Anaxagoras who, forsaking any principle 

 of order, tried to explain everything by " having recourse to 

 air, ether, and water and other eccentricities." ^^ 



Aristotle as a scientist's scientist ^^ and philosopher's philoso- 

 pher fully and formally develops this Socratic position in Book 

 I of the Parts of Animals. He, too, as if writing against the 

 enthusiastic follower of Harvey, who reads but does not under- 

 stand him, talks about " the ancient writers, who first philoso- 

 phized about Nature as having busied themselves " with " the 

 material principle and material cause." *° Aristotle explains, 

 on the contrary, that 



if men and animals and their several parts are natural phenomena, 

 then the natural philosopher must take into consideration not 

 merely the ultimate substances of which they are made but also . . . 

 the homogeneous and heterogeneous parts; and must examine how 

 each of these comes to be what it is, and in virtue of what force. 

 For to say what are the ultimate substances out of which an 

 animal is formed, to state, for instance, that it is made of fire or 

 earth, is no more sufficient than would be a similar account in the 

 case of a couch or the like . . . For a couch is . . . such and such a 

 matter with this or that form; so that its shape and structure must 

 be included in our description. For the formal nature is of greater 

 importance than the material nature.*^ 



Aristotle finally concludes that 



It is plain, then, that the teaching of the old physiologists is 

 inadequate, and that the true method is to state what the definitive 

 characters are that distinguish the animal as a whole; to explain 

 what it is both in substance and in form, and to deal after the same 



" Plato, Phaedo, 96 B. 



"' Ibid., 98 C. 



'' Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, Letter to Ogle, 1882, vol. 3, p. 252: " From 

 quotations I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the 

 most remote notion what a wonderful man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been 

 my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old 

 Aristotle." 



*° Aristotle, Parts of Animals, Bk. I, ch. 1, 640 b 5. 



" Ibid., 640 b 15-29. 



