biology of aristotle essays

biology of aristotle essays Many would consider that Aristotles biological studies left a more beneficial legacy. His studies in this area marked a watershed in the history of Greek science.[20] In contrast to Plato, he placed the value of personal observation above abstract argument.[21] He was an expert logician (the founder of formal logic) and this led naturally to him being the originator of systematic biological classification.[22] Most scholars agree that this was his greatest contribution to science. In his works[23] he referred to about 520 species of animals, and his descriptions of some have only been confirmed in the last 150 years.[24] With the benefit of specimens collected during Alexanders conquests Aristotle was able to write his History of Animals, The Generation of Animals and The Parts of Animals, reputedly the first scientific treatises of this kind produced in Europe and unsurpassed in their detail until the sixteenth century.[25] Aristotle rightly rejected the idea that the reproductive seed is drawn from the whole body (known as pangenesis), and so denied that acquired characteristics could be inherited[26] as Lamarck (1744-1829) later maintained. He has been called the first evolutionist by some.[27]. Such a claim is totally unjustified because Aristotole taught the fixity of species[28] and attributed the driving force behind evolution to a guiding intelligence[29] rather than to a purely natural random process. Aristotle rejected the idea that men were spontaneously generated by the earth, and that water-animals had developed on dry land.[30] However, he did teach that spiders, locusts, cicadas, roundworms,[31] eels[32] barnacles[33] and certain fish,[34] are all spontaneously generated from mud and putrefying material. By the sixteenth century Aristotelian philosophy had been harmonised with biblical revelation and biblical revelation with Aristotelian philosophy to such a degree that it b...