CHAPTER XX 

 EPOCHS IN BIOLOGICAL HISTORY 



History must convey the sense not only of succession but 

 also of evolution. 



SOME knowledge of hunting, agriculture, and husbandry 

 was one of the early acquirements of prehistoric Man, and 

 at the dawn of history, nearly 5000 years ago, systems of 

 medicine apparently found a place in Egyptian and Babylo- 

 nian civilizations. So, on the practical side, biology has a very 

 ancient beginning. But biology as the science of life in 

 which emphasis is transferred to the philosophical to the 

 study of vital phenomena for their own sake really begins 

 with the Greeks. 



Science reaching Greece from the South and East fell upon 

 fertile soil, and in the hands of the Hellenic natural philoso- 

 phers was transformed into coherent systems through the 

 realization that nature works by fixed laws a conception 

 foreign to the Oriental mind and the corner-stone of all 

 future scientific investigation. It is not an exaggeration 

 to say that to all intents and purposes the Greeks laid the 

 foundations of the chief subdivisions of natural science and, 

 specifically, created biology. 



A. GREEK AND ROMAN SCIENCE 



ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.), the most famous pupil of 

 Plato and dissenter from his School, represents the high- 

 water mark of the Greek students of nature and is justly 

 called the Father of Natural History. Although Aristotle's 



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