The Science of Life. 



Chapter I. 

 An Outline of the History of Biology. 



Foundations Aristotle The Dormant Period Legendary Biology 

 The Scientific Renascence The Encyclopedists From Buffon to 

 Darwin: A. Morphological Analysis; B. Physiological Analysis 

 After Darwin Summary. 



Although the inquisitive mood is probably instinctive 

 in man, it does not seem likely that the early conditions 

 of human life can have favoured the pursuit _ 



r . . , r 1 T ^ 11, Foundations. 



of knowledge for its own sake. It was doubt- 

 less in practical lore that the science of life had its be- 

 ginnings. The gardener and the shepherd, the herb- 

 gatherer and the huntsman, were the pioneers of the 

 biologist, and they may teach him still. 



If we use the term Biology, in its widest sense of Life- 

 lore, to include all the results of the scientific study of 

 living creatures, we must admit that it had its founda- 

 tions in antiquity. But if we restrict the word, as is 

 often done, to the study of the general vital phenomena 

 common to plants and animals, then it is very modern. 

 A long period of descriptive work and detailed analysis 

 was necessary before there could be much progress with 

 the general problems of biology (in the stricter sense), 

 which have to do with the nature and origin, continuance 

 and evolution, of organic life. Even the word Biology is 

 not older than the beginning of the nineteenth century. 



Of the period before Aristotle it is perhaps enough to 

 say that it reminds one of childhood the useful, the 

 dangerous, the strange bulked largely in men's minds; 



(M523) A 



