

An Outline of the History of Biology. 



the founding of universities and learned societies, the 

 establishment of museums and botanic gardens, the in- 

 vention of printing and the translation of Aristotle's 

 works these and many other practical, emotional, and 

 intellectual movements gave fresh force to science, and 

 indeed to the whole life of man. 



As far as biology was concerned, the direct result 

 of the scientific renascence might be described as a 

 return to nature. It began to be perceived The Encycio- 

 that Aristotle had not quite finished the papists, 

 subject, and that every man might be his own observer. 

 With enthusiasm men turned to the task of seeing for 

 themselves, and there began the period of the Encyclo- 

 paedists. This somewhat cumbrous title is useful, for it 

 suggests the omnivorous habits of those early workers, 

 who, with an appetite greater than their power of diges- 

 tion, collected all possible information about all sorts of 

 living things. Prominent among them were four: the 

 Englishman Edward Wotton (1492-1555), who wrote a 

 treatise, De Differentiis Animalium, still in great part 

 Aristotelian; the Swiss Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), 

 author of a voluminous Historia Animalium\ the Italian 

 Aldrovandi (b. 1522); and the Scot Johnston (b. 1603). 



Although Buffon was a thinker, it seems almost fair 

 to say that the best aims of the Encyclopaedists were 

 realized in his Histoire Naturelle, which appeared in 

 fifteen volumes between 1749 and 1767. He may be 

 taken as the centre of a strong enthusiasm for natural 

 history which characterized a great part of the eighteenth 

 century, and found expression in the brilliant discoveries 

 of workers like Reaumur, Rcesel, De Geer, Schaffer, and 

 Bonnet. 



Buffon took all nature for his province; but from his 

 date we have, apart from a few great workers, to deal 

 with specialists, becoming more and more From Buffon 

 specialized as we approach to-day. Thus to Darwin, 

 there is a marked division between the investigators of 

 form and structure (morphologists) and the investigators 

 of habit and function (physiologists). There have been, 

 and are, many who may be cited as both, but the moods 

 and methods of the two disciplines are quite different. 



