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History of Animals (Ancient Greek: Τῶν περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱστοριῶν, Ton peri ta zoia historion, "Inquiries on Animals"; Latin: Historia Animalium, "History of Animals") is one of the major texts on biology by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was written in sometime between the mid-fourth century BC and Aristotle's ...
Aristotle sets out to "discuss the parts which are useful to animals for their movement from place to place, and consider why each part is of the nature which it is, and why they possess them, and further the differences in the various parts of one and the same animal and in those of animals of different species compared with one another ...
Aristotle (384–322 BC) studied at Plato's Academy in Athens, remaining there for about 20 years.Like Plato, he sought universals in his philosophy, but unlike Plato he backed up his views with detailed and systematic observation, notably of the natural history of the island of Lesbos, where he spent about two years, and the marine life in the seas around it, especially of the Pyrrha lagoon ...
Aristotle furthers this idea of being a "middle cause" by furnishing the metaphor of the movement of the elbow, as it relates to the immobility of the shoulder (703a13). The inborn pneuma is, likewise, tethered to the soul, or as he says here, tēn arche tēn psuchikēn, " the origin of the soul," the soul as the center of causality.
Spontaneous generation of seashells, according to Aristotle, varied with the nature of the seabed. Slime gave rise to oysters; sand, to scallops; and the hollows of rocks, to limpets and barnacles. People kept on wondering, though, whether the eggs of these animals might not be central to the generation process. [1]
Chapter 1 begins with Aristotle claiming to have already addressed the parts of animals, referencing the author's work of the same name. While this and possibly his other biological works , have addressed three of the four causes pertaining to animals, the final , formal , and material , the efficient cause has yet to be spoken of.
The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to Ayurveda, ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world.
Darwin, too, noted these sorts of differences between similar kinds of animal, but unlike Aristotle used the data to come to the theory of evolution. [92] Aristotle's writings can seem to modern readers close to implying evolution, but while Aristotle was aware that new mutations or hybridizations could occur, he saw these as rare accidents ...