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History of Zoology Through 1859
History of Zoology Through 1859
The history of zoology before Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution traces the organized study of the
animal kingdom from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of zoology as a single coherent field
arose much later, systematic study of zoology is seen in the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient
Greco-Roman world. This work was developed in the Middle Ages by Islamic medicine and scholarship,
and in turn their work was extended by European scholars such as Albertus Magnus.
During the European Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in
Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this
movement were the anatomist Vesalius and the physiologist William Harvey, who used experimentation
and careful observation, and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the
diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Microscopy
revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The
growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, encouraged
the growth of natural history (although it entrenched the argument from design).
Over the 18th and 19th centuries, zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Explorer-
naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their
environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for
biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance
of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis
of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1859, Darwin placed the theory of organic
evolution on a new footing, by his discovery of a process by which organic evolution can occur, and
provided observational evidence that it had done so.
Contents
Pre-scientific zoology
Ancient eastern cultures
Ancient Greek traditions
Aristotelian zoology
Aristotle
Hellenistic zoology
Medieval and Islamic zoology
Renaissance and early modern
From anatomy to systematic taxonomy
Impact of the microscope
In advance of On the Origin of Species
See also
References
Sources
Pre-scientific zoology
The earliest humans must have had and passed on knowledge
about animals to increase their chances of survival. This may have
included unsystematic knowledge of human and animal anatomy
and aspects of animal behavior (such as migration patterns). People
learnt more about animals with the Neolithic Revolution about
10,000 years ago. Humans domesticated animals as people became
pastoralists and then farmers instead of hunter-gatherers in
civilisations such as those of ancient Egypt.[1]
An ancient Egyptian plows his fields
with a pair of oxen, used as beasts
Ancient eastern cultures of burden and a source of food.
The pre-Socratic philosophers asked many questions about life but produced little systematic knowledge of
specifically zoological interest—though the attempts of the atomists to explain life in purely physical terms
would recur periodically through the history of zoology. However, the medical theories of Hippocrates and
his followers, especially humorism, had a lasting impact.[6]
Aristotelian zoology
Aristotle
The philosopher Aristotle created the science of biology, basing its theory on both his metaphysical
principles and on observation. He proposed theories for the processes of metabolism, temperature
regulation, information processing, embryonic development and inheritance. He made detailed observations
of nature, especially the habits and attributes of animals in the sea at Lesbos. He classified 540 animal
species, and dissected at least 50.[7][8][9]
Aristotle, and nearly all Western scholars after him until the 18th
century, believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of
perfection rising from plants on up to humans: the scala naturae or
Great Chain of Being.[10]
Hellenistic zoology
The Renaissance was the age of collectors and travellers, when many of the stories were actually
demonstrated as true when the living or preserved specimens were brought to Europe. Verification by
collecting of things, instead of the accumulation of anecdotes, then became more common, and scholars
developed a new faculty of careful observation. The Renaissance brought expanded interest in both
empirical natural history and physiology. In 1543, Andreas Vesalius inaugurated the modern era of Western
medicine with his seminal human anatomy treatise De humani corporis fabrica, which was based on
dissection of corpses. Vesalius was the first in a series of anatomists who gradually replaced scholasticism
with empiricism in physiology and medicine, relying on first-hand experience rather than authority and
abstract reasoning. Bestiaries—a genre that combines both the natural and
figurative knowledge of animals—also became more sophisticated. Conrad
Gessner great zoological work, Historiae animalium, appeared in four
volumes, 1551–1558, at Zürich, a fifth being issued in 1587. His works
were the starting-point of modern zoology. Other major works were
produced by William Turner, Pierre Belon, Guillaume Rondelet, and Ulisse
Aldrovandi.[21] Artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci,
often working with naturalists, were also interested in the bodies of animals
and humans, studying physiology in detail and contributing to the growth
of anatomical knowledge.[22]
Conrad Gesner (1516–1565).
In the 17th century, the enthusiasts of the new sciences, the investigators of His Historiae animalium is
nature by means of observation and experiment, banded themselves into considered the beginning of
academies or societies for mutual support and discourse. The first founded modern zoology.
of surviving European academies, the Academia Naturae Curiosorum
(1651) especially confined itself to the description and illustration of the
structure of plants and animals; eleven years later (1662) the Royal Society of London was incorporated by
royal charter, having existed without a name or fixed organisation for seventeen years previously (from
1645). A little later the Academy of Sciences of Paris was established by Louis XIV, later still the Royal
Society of Sciences in Uppsala was founded. Systematizing, naming and classifying dominated zoology
throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Carl Linnaeus published a basic taxonomy for the natural world in
1735 (variations of which have been in use ever since), and in the 1750s introduced scientific names for all
his species.[23] While Linnaeus conceived of species as unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy, the other
great naturalist of the 18th century, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, treated species as artificial
categories and living forms as malleable—even suggesting the possibility of common descent. Though he
was writing in an era before evolution existed, Buffon is a key figure in the history of evolutionary thought;
his "transformist" theory would influence the evolutionary theories of both Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and
Charles Darwin.[24]
Before the Age of Exploration, naturalists had little idea of the sheer scale of biological diversity. The
discovery and description of new species and the collection of specimens became a passion of scientific
gentlemen and a lucrative enterprise for entrepreneurs; many naturalists traveled the globe in search of
scientific knowledge and adventure.[25]
See also
List of zoologists
List of Russian zoologists
Important Publications in Zoology
Timeline of zoology
References
1. Magner, A History of the Life Sciences, pp 2–3
2. Needham, Joseph; Ronan, Colin Alistair (1995). The Shorter Science and Civilisation in
China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham's Original Text, Vol. 1. Cambridge University
Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-521-29286-3.
3. Magner, A History of the Life Sciences, p. 6
4. Girish Dwivedi, Shridhar Dwivedi (2007). "History of Medicine: Sushruta – the Clinician –
Teacher par Excellence" (https://web.archive.org/web/20081010045900/http://medind.nic.in/i
ae/t07/i4/iaet07i4p243.pdf) (PDF). National Informatics Centre. Archived from the original (ht
tp://medind.nic.in/iae/t07/i4/iaet07i4p243.pdf) (PDF) on 2008-10-10. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
5. Magner, A History of the Life Sciences, pp 3–9
6. Magner, A History of the Life Sciences, pp 9–27
7. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 84–90, 135
8. Mason, A History of the Sciences, pp 41–44
9. Leroi, Armand Marie (2014). The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Bloomsbury.
pp. 370–373. ISBN 978-1-4088-3622-4.
10. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 201–202; see also: Lovejoy, The Great Chain of
Being
11. Barnes, Hellenistic Philosophy and Science, p 383–384
12. Annas, Classical Greek Philosophy, p 252
13. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 91–94
14. Mehmet Bayrakdar, "Al-Jahiz And the Rise of Biological Evolutionism", The Islamic
Quarterly, Third Quarter, 1983, London.
15. Paul S. Agutter & Denys N. Wheatley (2008). Thinking about Life: The History and
Philosophy of Biology and Other Sciences. Springer. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-4020-8865-0.
16. Conway Zirkle (1941), Natural Selection before the "Origin of Species", Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 84 (1): 71–123.
17. Frank N. Egerton, "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 6: Arabic Language Science -
Origins and Zoological", Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, April 2002: 142–146
[143]
18. Lawrence I. Conrad (1982), "Taun and Waba: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in
Early Islam", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (3), pp. 268–307
[278].
19. Albertus Magnus. On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica. The Review of Metaphysics |
December 01, 2001 | Tkacz, Michael W.
20. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 91–94:
"As far as biology as a whole is concerned, it was not until the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century that the universities became centers of biological
research."
Sources
Desmond, Adrian J.; Moore, James (1991). Darwin. Warner Books.
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