Aristotle's biology 



constituents and processes of the world. It 

 was pursued by men whom we have been taught 

 to call philosophers ; and in fact only gradually 

 did philosophy, more properly speaking, dif- 

 ferentiate itself from physics, that is, from the 

 elemental attempt to observe and know the 

 physical world, Greek philosophy was to con- 

 sist of logical and metaphysical conceptions; 

 Greek physical, or let us say specifically bio- 

 logical, science was to continue as observation 

 and induction. Yet it did not part company 

 from philosophy, and occasionally employed 

 the same processes of logic and even meta- 

 physics. The same men might still be both 

 scientists and philosophers — or metaphysi- 

 cians. The greatest of Greek biologists was 

 very nearly the greatest of Greek philosophers; 

 and Aristotle the biologist did not abjure the 

 logical and metaphysical reasonings of Aris- 

 totle the philosopher.^^ 



But modern biology, if we fix our eyes upon 

 its most fecund inceptions and vigorous growth, 

 was departmental or special from the begin- 

 ning, and alien from those sweeping explana- 

 tions and ultimate accountings which seemed 

 to constitute philosophy. In this sense, neither 

 Leonardo nor Vesalius nor Harvey was a phi- 



[41] 



