_Before Aristotle_
What is science? It is a question that cannot be answered easily, nor
perhaps answered at all. None of the definitions seem to cover the field
exactly; they are either too wide or too narrow. But we can see science
in its growth and we can say that being a process it can exist only as
growth. Where does the science of biology begin? Again we cannot say,
but we can watch its evolution and its progress. Among the Greeks the
accurate observation of living forms, which is at least one of the
essentials of biological science, goes back very far. The word
_Biology_, used in our sense, would, it is true, have been an
impossibility among them, for _bios_ refers to the life of man and could
not be applied, except in a strained or metaphorical sense, to that of
other living things.[6] But the _ideas_ we associate with the word are
clearly developed in Greek philosophy and the foundations of biology are
of great antiquity.
[6] The word _Biology_ was introduced by Gottfried Reinhold
Treviranus (1776-1837) in his _Biologie oder die Philosophie der
lebenden Natur_, 6 vols., Göttingen, 1802-22, and was adopted by
J.-B. de Lamarck (1744-1829) in his _Hydrogéologie_, Paris, 1802. It
is probable that the first English use of the word in its modern
sense is by Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) in his work _On the
Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man_, London, 1819;
there are earlier English uses of the word, however, contrasted with
_biography_.
The Greek people had many roots, racial, cultural, and spiritual, and
from them all they inherited various powers and qualities and derived
various ideas and traditions. The most suggestive source for our purpose
is that of the Minoan race whom they dispossessed and whose lands they
occupied. That highly gifted people exhibited in all stages of its
development a marvellous power of graphically representing animal forms,
of which the famous Cretan friezes, Vaphio cups (Fig. 5), and Mycenean
lions provide well-known examples. It is difficult not to believe that
the Minoan element, entering into the mosaic of peoples that we call the
Greeks, was in part at least responsible for the like graphic power
developed in the Hellenic world, though little contact has yet been
demonstrated between Minoan and archaic Greek Art.
For the earliest biological achievements of Greek peoples we have to
rely largely on information gleaned from artistic remains. It is true
that we have a few fragments of the works of both Ionian and
Italo-Sicilian philosophers, and in them we read of theoretical
speculation as to the nature of life and of the soul, and we can thus
form some idea of the first attempts of such workers as Alcmaeon of
Croton (_c._ 500 B. C.) to lay bare the structure of animals by
dissection.[7] The pharmacopœia also of some of the earliest works of
the Hippocratic collection betrays considerable knowledge of both native
and foreign plants.[8] Moreover, scattered through the pages of
Herodotus and other early writers is a good deal of casual information
concerning animals and plants, though such material is second-hand and
gives us little information concerning the habit of exact observation
that is the necessary basis of science.
[7] The remains of Alcmaeon are given in H. Diel's _Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker_, Berlin, 1903, p. 103. Alcmaeon is considered in
the companion chapter on _Greek Medicine_.
[8] Especially the περι γυναικειης φυσιος {peri gynaikeiês physios},
_On the nature of woman_, and the περι γυναικειων {peri gynaikeiôn},
_On the diseases of women_.
Something more is, however, revealed by early Greek Art. We are in
possession of a series of vases of the seventh and sixth centuries
before the Christian era showing a closeness of observation of animal
forms that tells of a people awake to the study of nature. We have thus
portrayed for us a number of animals--plants seldom or never appear--and
among the best rendered are wild creatures: we see antelopes quietly
feeding or startled at a sound, birds flying or picking worms from the
ground, fallow deer forcing their way through thickets, browsing
peacefully, or galloping away, boars facing the hounds and dogs chasing
hares, wild cattle forming their defensive circle, hawks seizing their
prey. Many of these exhibit minutely accurate observation. The very
direction of the hairs on the animals' coats has sometimes been closely
studied, and often the muscles are well rendered. In some cases even the
dentition has been found accurately portrayed, as in a sixth-century
representation on an Ionian vase of a lioness--an animal then very rare
on the Eastern Mediterranean littoral, but still known in Babylonia,
Syria, and Asia Minor. The details of the work show that the artist must
have examined the animal in captivity (Figs. 1 and 2).
[Illustration: FIG. 1. Lioness and young from an Ionian vase of the
sixth century B. C. found at Caere in Southern Etruria (Louvre, Salle E,
No. 298), from _Le Dessin des Animaux en Grèce d'après les vases
peints_, by J. Morin, Paris (Renouard), 1911. The animal is drawing
itself up to attack its hunters. The scanty mane, the form of the paws,
the udders, and the dentition are all heavily though accurately
represented.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2. A, Jaw bones of lion; B, head of lioness from
Caere vase (Fig. 1), after Morin. Note the careful way in which the
artist has distinguished the molar from the cutting teeth.]
Animal paintings of this order are found scattered over the Greek world
with special centres or schools in such places as Cyprus, Boeotia, or
Chalcis. The very name for a painter in Greek, _zoographos_, recalls the
attention paid to living forms. By the fifth century, in painting them
as in other departments of Art, the supremacy of Attica had asserted
itself, and there are many beautiful Attic vase-paintings of animals to
place by the side of the magnificent horses' heads of the Parthenon
(Fig. 6). In Attica, too, was early developed a characteristic and
closely accurate type of representation of marine forms, and this
attained a wider vogue in Southern Italy in the fourth century. From the
latter period a number of dishes and vases have come down to us bearing
a large variety of fish forms, portrayed with an exactness that is
interesting in view of the attention to marine creatures in the
surviving literature of Aristotelian origin (Fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3. Paintings of fish on plates. Italo-Greek work of
the fourth century B. C. From Morin.
A. Sargus vulgaris.
B. Crenilabrus mediterraneus.
C. Uranoscopus scaber?]
These artistic products are more than a mere reflex of the daily life
of the people. The habits and positions of animals are observed by the
hunter, as are the forms and colours of fish by the fisherman; but the
methods of huntsman and fisher do not account for the accurate portrayal
of a lion's dentition, the correct numbering of a fish's scales or the
close study of the lie of the feathers on the head, and the pads on the
feet, of a bird of prey (Fig. 4). With observations such as these we are
in the presence of something worthy of the name _Biology_. Though but
little literature on that topic earlier than the writings of Aristotle
has come down to us, yet both the character of his writings and such
paintings and pictures as these, suggest the existence of a strong
interest and a wide literature, biological in the modern sense,
antecedent to the fourth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Head and talons of the Sea-eagle, _Haliaëtus
albicilla_:
A, From an Ionic vase of the sixth century B. C.
B, Drawn from the object.