2 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



represents the cumulative results of the application, to 

 problems of life, of the scientific method a method which 

 is not peculiar to science but merely a perfected concentra- 

 tion, of our human resources of observation, experimentation, 

 and reflection. Thus far this has been a most productive 

 method and certainly has given no evidence that its useful- 

 ness is being exhausted. To follow any other course would 

 be to abandon the method of science. "In ultimate analysis 

 everything is incomprehensible, and the whole object of 

 science is simply to reduce the fundamental incomprehensi- 

 bilities to the smallest possible number." 



The foundations of the scientific study of living nature were 

 laid by Aristotle and Theophrastus over 2000 years ago. On 

 the basis of collecting, dissecting, classifying, and pondering 

 they reached generalizations, many of which have but recently 

 been put on a firm basis of fact. Indeed these pioneers 

 asked nearly all the broad questions which are fundamental 

 to-day; but from the Greeks until about the fifteenth century 

 there is little to record. There were many additions to the 

 body of knowledge during this long slumber period, but fact 

 and fancy were so amalgamated that the truth was obscured. 



The feeling that though Man is of nature, he is still apart, 

 was expressed at the revival of learning in the broad classifica- 

 tion of all knowledge as history of nature and history of 

 Man; the former having as its content the record or "history 

 of such facts or effects of nature as have no dependence on 

 Man's will, such as the histories of metals, plants, animals, 

 regions, and the like"; the latter treating of the voluntary 

 actions of men in communities. Thus all record of facts 

 was either natural history or civil history. From this more 

 or less nebulous natural history the present-day sciences of 

 astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and biology were 

 thrown off as relatively independent bodies of facts as each 



