Biology. What influence did Aristotle have on science? Aristotle's research in biology
The name of the greatest ancient Greek thinker Aristotle (384-322 BC) is associated with experiments to create a taxonomy of living nature, attempts to move from specific knowledge to generalizations.
For many centuries, the works of Aristotle served as a source of information about living beings. His works “De animalibus”, “De partibus animalium”, “De generatione animalium” and others reveal the depth of philosophical thought.
For Aristotle, man is a material, corporeal being, but only the master has a soul. The world around us is an objective reality. Materiality and thingness of objects are not the same thing: thingness is associated with form, the substrate of form is matter as an eternal quality, devoid of any certainty. The separation of matter and form does not seem absurd to Aristotle. So he oscillates between materialism and idealism, with the latter more often gaining the upper hand. But in his worldview there was clearly a “naive faith in the power of reason, in the strength, power, objective truth of knowledge.”
Aristotle's work is characterized by the mastery of vast empirical material and the accumulation of his own data on anatomy and zoology. Rich erudition helped him become the creator of the first system of knowledge, still natural-philosophical in its essence.
His classification, in which the entire animal world is divided into animals with blood and animals without blood, was preserved with minor changes until Linnaeus (white-blooded and red-blooded animals).
Aristotle was not only a practical biologist and classifier, but also a biologist-thinker who tried to find objective laws. He was not an evolutionist, but he had already written about the ladder of living beings (scala naturae), stretching from plants through the lowest animals known to him (sea sponges) to the higher animals.
Aristotle proposed the name “organ” - literally an instrument, the definition of which reflected the dualistic essence of his worldview. Living beings are “somata fisica organika”, or translated into Latin - corpora organisata. This is how organisms were designated throughout the Middle Ages until modern times.
In each organ, Aristotle distinguishes mass (materia), form (morphe), activity (kinesis) and purpose (telos). With this division, Aristotle proves his commitment to the ideas of Plato, his teacher. According to Aristotle, all living beings are fundamentally different from inanimate objects. The power of self-improvement - entelechia - is fundamental for the development of living beings. The guiding factor that moves the body is the “soul”. It can have different stages: in plants it is nutritious, in animals the soul is also sensitive, and in humans it is thinking. This concept of Aristotle was shared by all medieval authors, and in a slightly changed form it appears later, for example, in Descartes, who placed the soul, supposedly localized in the pineal gland, above the brain, above the nervous system, which, according to the author, performs the functions of an instrument of the soul.
Aristotle is a spiritual seeker who collected new facts. Nature in his generalizations appears to be in motion, which began, however, at the behest of magic (God) as a result of a push. Aristotle's major works, The History of Animals and On the Parts of Animals, contain descriptions of about 500 species of animals, grouped according to their structure. The author depicts the organization of the body of animals and humans teleologically: each organ is created for a specific purpose. The connection of organs into a harmonious complex unity is produced by a higher power - “entelechy”.
Aristotle the philosopher was largely inferior to Aristotle the biologist, who left a legacy of 4 major and 11 minor works on various problems of biology. Thanks to his works, the natural sciences, in particular zoology and anatomy, received a reliable foundation. He studied many animals himself using the dissection method. The birth of the comparative method in anatomy is the indisputable merit of Aristotle.
Drying cabinets for clothes and shoes are produced by many companies. Most of the Russian market is occupied by manufacturers from our country. Here we will look at two brands “KUBAN” (Amparo) and “RSHS” from the Moscow Rubin plant. The Moscow production association Rubin produces both traditional drying cabinets and infrared ones. The production is certified, the products have been on the market for 23 years. ...
Drying cabinets for clothes and shoes
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MAXANTO invites you to watch a video about how a serf talks about the eccentricities of a Hindu master and the mysterious and incomprehensible Samsara! ...
One-actor theater: serf, Hindu master and Samsara
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They say that actors are people who reveal human essence. Emotions overflowing, pantomime on the verge of a foul. All this is in the video that MAXANTO posted right below this text. ...
Who are you in fact? You have changed?
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Annie Veitch is an artist from Ontario (Canada). Her oil paintings feature female figures. She explores and presents us with the simple beauty of the body, and also tries to convey the range of complex human emotions. ...
Paintings of dreams on canvases by Canadian Annie Veitch
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The history of the emergence and development of Urdu is extremely interesting. In the 9th century, with the advent of Muslim conquerors in India, North Indian Hindavi, a developed language with rich folklore, began to be enriched with a variety of Persian and Arabic words and adopted a slightly modified Arabic script. ...
India: Urdu language (Hindustani)
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When the time comes for the documents to be ready to connect gas, you need to start choosing a gas boiler. There are a lot of brands of boilers, and in this diversity of equipment, you need to choose a boiler that would satisfy all your requirements. Conversations with neighbors who have had gas connected for a long time, as a rule, do not yield anything definite. Everyone tells their own stories, some praise the boiler, and some already have their third, and the last one is very good. ...
How to choose a gas boiler, boiler, remote access system, etc.
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Nowadays there are many companies on the Internet that offer their customers a wide range of different products. In this article we will talk about popular online stores that sell cleaning equipment and machinery. So, the top 5:...
Review of online stores where you can buy cleaning equipment
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The construction of the Thupden Shedudling temple complex in Otradnoye is proceeding as usual. The Enlightenment Stupa has already been built next to the Temporary Stupa. ...
Stupa of Enlightenment of the Thupden Shedubling Temple Complex - Moscow
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The unreasonableness of the thought haunts me. Radiant boys sing their speeches from YouTube channels, collecting millions of subscribers. Having caught my breath, I realized that I did not envy them, but in some ways even admired them. Just imagine how many people want to learn business and become a “Big Boss”. ...
Trainings: how to study so as not to leave disappointed?
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Instructions on how to connect a combined indirect heating boiler to the heating system of a gas boiler. ...
Connecting a combined indirect heating boiler (IBC) to the heating system of a gas boiler
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The procedure and deadlines for processing documents and performing gas connection work. Provided that there is a gas main near your house. ...
Gas supply to a private house in the Moscow region, in TSN.
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As soon as the conductor bows to the audience, waves his baton, with a wave of which the red theater curtains open and the orchestra enters, you understand: this is Imre Kalman. His music, solemn and eternal, takes you into the wonderful world of Viennese operettas, even if they are now called musicals. ...
Circus Princess of the Moscow Musical Theater
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Queen's new video with vocals by Freddie Mercury for the song All Dead, All Dead from the album News of the world. ...
New Queen video with vocals by Freddie Mercury
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On October 12, 2017, the Central Bank of Russia introduced banknotes with denominations of 200 and 2000 rubles. ...
The Central Bank introduced new banknotes in denominations of 200 and 2000 rubles
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Scientists believe that the first clocks were created and made public domain by the ancient Greeks. To ensure that the townspeople who lived in ancient Athens did not feel out of time, special people scurried around the streets of the city, for a small fee they reported where the sundial shadow mark was currently located. ...
Who invented the clock? History of invention
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“The bathhouse heals the soul,” that’s what they said in Rus', and they were right. You can remember how in the film “Midshipmen”, a Frenchman who decided to go to a Russian steam room shouted obscenities in his own language and fled in shame from the walls of the holy place. For a Russian, a bathhouse is part of his life. In the bathhouse, a person cleanses his body and soul after a week of work. ...
Bath for body and soul
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Sleepwalking is a special state of sleep, observed more often in children and adolescents. With sleepwalking, there is a disorder of consciousness, accompanied by automatic complex actions during night sleep. ...
Sleepwalking
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Traditionally, in the northern countries, a stove was used to heat the house in cold times, while in the southern countries they were content with fireplaces. This was the case until recently, when some manufacturers created a symbiosis between a stove and a fireplace, which combined the aesthetics of an open fire and the warmth from a real stove. We will tell you about the Swedish manufacturer KEDDY, which for the third decade now has been producing a whole range of stoves with supercassettes - glass-enclosed fireboxes, through which you can watch the fire consuming wood. ...
Swedish Keddy Maxette stoves and fireplaces
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Registration of a land plot and a country house in ownership on a site intended for housing construction (if it is not a garden or dacha partnership) From January 1, 2017, instead of a certificate of registration of land rights, a new document was introduced, which is called an “extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate” (a single state real estate register). The extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate included: an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate (rights) and the state real estate cadastre. ...
Registration of land plot and country house ownership
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After watching the show Exactly, where Gennady Khazanov acts as a judge, one gets a painful impression. Looking at him, one might decide that the era of acting is over. That is why the MAXANTO correspondent went with caution to the performance of Anton Chekhov’s theater “Dinner with a Fool”; Imagine his surprise when he rendered a verdict that Khazanov was perhaps the only one who “inherited” the enchanting manner of playing with strokes, a little at a time, characteristic of Arkady Raikin. And he not only inherited it, but carried it through the thickness of decades, without spilling the liquid from this precious vessel at all. ...
Dinner with a Fool - Gennady Khazanov
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There is an anecdote about a monk knocking on a woman’s door for the night. The woman set conditions for spending the night: drink with her, eat meat or spend the night. The monk refused, but there was little choice, otherwise he would have frozen at night, since he was in the mountains where there was snow. And the monk agreed to drink some wine with her. And only after drinking, he ate the meat, and then he slept with her. ...
Confession of a vegetarian or how I started eating meat again
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Moscow. Red Square. How much has been said, how much has been written. Military parades have been and are still taking place on Red Square; people go to meet Lenin in the mausoleum. It’s still a miracle, what if they remove it soon? ...
Moscow. Red Square. Summer 2017.
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On May 31, on the eve of summer, a MAXANTO correspondent attended a club meeting held by Andrey Veselov on the topic: “Strategic changes: awaken the power of 5P!” ...
Strategic Change: Unleash the Power of the 5Ps
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Those who are accustomed to looking at their feet in the summer know that in nature, and even in the urban jungle, many different beetles crawl on the ground. At the same time, sometimes we don’t even think about the fact that some species are listed in the Red Book... One of the endangered species is the Caucasian ground beetle...
Caucasian ground beetle - a beetle from the Red Book
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Many people are thinking about building a country house. What should you pay special attention to when building it and installing utilities? Where to begin? ...
Mistakes when building a country house
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A plant is being built in Kaliningrad where it is planned to produce automatic transmissions. According to the business plan, the production area will be 80 thousand square meters, and the planned production volume should reach 30 thousand ACPs per year. ...
KATE: Russian automatic transmissions
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Elon Musk proposes a radical solution - the construction of new metro lines specifically for cars. At first glance, this looks futuristic and not feasible. But let's digress for a moment and remember that another no less plausible project of Elon Musk - Hyperloop (the construction of tubes in which trains will travel at speeds of over 1200 km/h) is already being implemented. Therefore, let's see how the developers see the underground for cars. ...
Subway for cars
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Installing a heating element in an indirect heating boiler Baxi Premier Plus
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The first UAZ DEVOLRO will be ready in early July 2017! Orlov outlined the date for the appearance of the first car in the United States. UAZ DEVOLRO will be available for the first time to see (and buy) in July 2017! The price will depend on the configuration, starting from $15,000 and up to $35,000. ...
The first UAZ DEVOLRO will be available for purchase in early July 2017
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Today, disposers are no longer amazing devices. In many apartments and country houses their use has become commonplace. However, among the general population there is still no complete confidence that they are really needed. Moreover, the phrase “food waste shredder” sometimes confuses us, because it is not entirely clear why we should chop something at all? ...
Bone Crusher and InSinkErator disposers
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It is known that no two people are identical in nature. Even doubles, upon close examination, are not at all identical. Nature provides a countless variety of species, which is ultimately an element of evolution. Surely many people have noticed that everything in a person is different: even the ears. Thus, there are several classifications of auricles. Of course, when it comes to personal identification, we primarily mean the identification of corpses in forensic science. Thus, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, every year more than twenty thousand (!!!) unidentified corpses are discovered in the country. Therefore, this problem is of interest to a greater extent to experts in criminal investigation. ...
Personal identification by ears in forensics
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Caterpillars are known pests. Of course, then they will become butterflies and, although they will remain the same destroyers of crops, they will acquire a certain colorfulness and will be pleasing to the eye. As for their predecessors - caterpillars, or, as they are also called, larvae, they do not evoke sympathy. Although some representatives are definitely photogenic. ...
Caterpillars are phytophages that eat leaves
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In addition to Russia and Europe, “agile lizards” even live in the north-west of Mongolia. However, perhaps it was from Mongolia that they came to Rus' along with the hordes of Genghis Khan! Take a look at two maps - the habitat of the "agile lizards" and the outlined border of the Mongol Empire - they overlap. There is an alternative opinion that this is not without reason. ...
The path of the lizard: from Mongolia to Europe
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Ipoh is a city in Malaysia that began to develop rapidly at the turn of the 19th century. Now it is home to over seven hundred thousand inhabitants, surrounded by modern buildings. However, buildings from the colonial era have also been preserved. The graffiti on the walls of the Old town, which was created by Ernest Zakharevich, is also quite interesting. The drawings appeared after the artist’s trip around the country. This resulted in such images as “pedicabs”, “old man with a cup of coffee”, “children on a paper airplane”, “tea bags”, “girl on a stool” and “hummingbird”. ...
Graffiti on the walls of Ipoh, Malaysia
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MAXANTO correspondents attended the training “103 new tricks of active sales”, which was conducted by the famous sales trainer Dmitry Tkachenko. ...
103 new active sales chips
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Today, the international publication motor1.com published a series of photographs of a “mysterious prototype of a large sedan.” The photographs were taken by the publication's photographers during sea trials on one of the frozen lakes in Sweden. And if some foreign readers are not entirely familiar with the design of the future presidential limousine, which should be ready for the upcoming inauguration in 2018, then MAXANTO readers will easily guess under the camouflage the future limousine of the AURUS brand, and not a Rolls-Royce or Bentley. ...
Test of the presidential limousine (project "Cortege") in Sweden
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They say that you can’t teach trading. But that's not true. For example, David Rockefeller Sr., who recently died, despite inherited capital, studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The “Sales and Marketing 2017” conference, organized under the auspices and with the direct support of B2Bbasis, has been taking place in Moscow for several years now. MAXANTO correspondents attended this interesting event to get acquainted with all the current trends in the field of marketing and promotion of services to the market. ...
Sales and Marketing 2017: This Year's Trends
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When Jean-Claude Van Damme did the splits on two moving Volvo trucks, the world burst into applause. But the video with Van Damme is not the first time that artists have shown stretching between moving objects. Of course, the first who began to show people such tricks were circus performers. MAXANTO managed to find a photograph of Vladimir Durov’s students. In all likelihood, the photograph dates back to the 60s of the last century. The picture shows circus artist Vladislava Varjakoene. ...
Twine on elephants, trucks, motorcycles
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Over the past decade, Satoshi Saikusa has created a number of projects that explore themes such as night, memory and the fragility of existence. Regardless of whether he works in a series of portraits, still lifes or installations, he says that the Buddhist concept runs through all his work impermanence - with an emphasis on memento mori. ...
Photographer Satoshi Saikusa: themes of death, birth and sleep
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Eva Green is the fatal beauty from the latest reboot of the James Bond films. The same Vesper Lynd who left scars on the heart of agent 007. We will not reflect on the attractiveness of this woman. Today MAXANTO will show you the images she created in collaboration with Japanese photographer Satoshi Saikusa. ...
Eva Green: Bond girl through a Japanese lens
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Of course, we will not be original if we say that praying mantises are alien creatures. Of course, they live on Earth and are very common on it. But take a closer look at them: weren’t their heads copied and copied by American film studios when creating their films about terrible aliens from outer space? Looking at them, only one thing is reassuring: praying mantises are small insects. If you imagine that they were at least the size of a cat or dog, we assure you that you would feel uneasy when meeting them. ...
Mantises: hellspawn from another planet?
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The performance is conceptual, as is the place where it is played - after all, the Zuev House of Culture is one of the most striking and famous monuments of constructivism in the world. But today we are not talking about that. The fact is that Oleg Dyachenko’s film “Faster than Rabbits” is completely devoid of video footage about phobias from the play, which immediately seems to decapitate the narrative. Comical episodes with Hamlet and in the Third Reich also deserve attention. MAXANTO offers a look at episodes not included in the film. ...
The king, whose son subsequently invited the future philosopher to mentor the young Alexander the Great. Aristotle studied with Plato, and after parting with his pupil, he founded his own school, the Lyceum, which is about thirteen years old. During this time, the philosopher wrote several major works: “Metaphysics”, “Physics”, “On the Soul”, “Ethics”, “Poetics”, “Organon”, “History of Animals” and others.
Most of his treatises are devoted to philosophy, despite the different titles. Philosophy in Ancient Greece was the science of existence and studied all phenomena in life. Aristotle distinguished three of its directions - poetic, theoretical and practical. He argued that all things consist of two principles: matter and form. Matter is the substance of which something is composed, and form is the idea, the active principle that organizes matter. At first, his reasoning was characterized by dualism, but later Aristotle became a follower of idealism and believed that form dominates matter.
Aristotle believed that in any science, research should begin with the study of individual things using sensory perception. He was a supporter of induction - movement from the particular to the general, but warned against making hasty conclusions. Aristotle delved into metaphysics for four reasons: material, formal, goal and motive.
Aristotle's influence on the development of science
Aristotle's views and teachings were valued not only during his lifetime, but also for centuries after. He was respected by Arab philosophers of subsequent centuries, scholastics of the Christian Middle Ages treated him with reverence, and humanists who rejected scholastic teaching valued his works even more.
Aristotle is considered the godfather of physics; his treatise “Physics” laid the foundation for the history of this science, although most of its content relates to philosophy. However, he correctly defined the tasks of physics - to study the causes, principles and elements of nature (that is, the fundamental laws, principles and fundamental particles).
Aristotle laid the foundations for the development of chemistry; with his teachings about the four principles - earth, air, water and fire - the pre-alchemical period in the history of this science began. The ancient Greek philosopher suggested that each beginning represents a state of primary matter, but has a certain set of qualities. This idea began to subsequently develop in the Middle Ages.
Aristotle had a huge influence on logic: he studied deductive conclusions, described the logical laws of contradiction, identity and excluded middle. This scientist made a particularly great contribution to philosophical science, defining the views of the Middle Ages and modern times. He also influenced the development of psychology, economics, politics, rhetoric, aesthetics and other areas of scientific knowledge. His works have been translated into Latin, Arabic, French, Hebrew, English and other languages.
Aristotle
Aristotle(384 BC, Stagira - 322 BC, Chalkis), ancient Greek philosopher and teacher. Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy for almost twenty years and apparently taught there for some time. After leaving the Academy, Aristotle became the tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle made a significant contribution to the ancient education system by founding the Lyceum in Athens, which continued its activities for many centuries. He conceived and organized large-scale natural science research, which Alexander financed. These studies led to many fundamental discoveries, but Aristotle's greatest achievements were in the field of philosophy.
The works of Aristotle that have come down to us are divided according to their content into 7 groups. Logical treatises united in the Organon: Categories, On Interpretation, Analysts One and Two, Topics. Physical treatises: Physics, On origin and destruction, On the sky, On meteorological issues. Biological treatises: History of animals, On the parts of animals, On the origin of animals, On the movement of animals, as well as a treatise On the soul. An essay on first philosophy, which considers existence as such and later received the name Metaphysics. Ethical works are the so-called Nicomachean Ethics (dedicated to Nicomacheus, the son of Aristotle) and Eudemic Ethics (dedicated to Eudemus, a student of Aristotle). Socio-political and historical works: Politics, Athenian polity. Works on art, poetry and rhetoric: Rhetoric and incompletely extant Poetics.
Aristotle covered almost all branches of knowledge available to his time. In his first philosophy (Metaphysics), Aristotle criticized Plato's teaching about ideas and gave a solution to the question of the relationship between the general and the individual in being. The singular is something that exists only somewhere and now, it is sensually perceived. The general is that which exists in any place and at any time (everywhere and always), manifesting itself under certain conditions in the individual through which it is cognized. The general constitutes the subject of science and is comprehended by the mind. To explain what exists, Aristotle accepted 4 reasons: the essence and essence of being, by virtue of which every thing is what it is (formal reason); matter and subject (substrate) that from which something arises (material cause); driving cause, beginning of movement; The target reason is for the sake of which something is done. Although Aristotle recognized matter as one of the first causes and considered it a certain essence, he saw in it only a passive principle (the ability to become something), but he attributed all activity to the other three causes, and attributed eternity and immutability to the essence of being, form, and the source of all movement considered the motionless but moving principle of God. Aristotle's God is the prime mover of the world, the highest goal of all forms and formations developing according to their own laws. Aristotle's doctrine of form is the doctrine of objective idealism. However, this idealism, as Lenin noted, in many respects... is more objective and more distant, more general, than Plato’s idealism, and therefore in natural philosophy it is more often than materialism. Movement, according to Aristotle, is the transition of something from possibility to reality. Aristotle distinguished 4 types of movement: qualitative, or change; quantitative increase and decrease; movement spatial movement; emergence and destruction, reduced to the first two types.
According to Aristotle, every really existing individual thing is a unity of matter and form, and form is the form inherent in the substance itself, assumed by it. The same object of the sensory world can be considered both as matter and as form. Copper is matter in relation to the ball (form) that is cast from copper. But the same copper is a form in relation to the physical elements, the combination of which, according to Aristotle, is the substance of copper. All reality thus turned out to be a sequence of transitions from matter to form and from form to matter.
In his doctrine of knowledge and its types, Aristotle distinguished between dialectical and apodictic knowledge. The area of the first is opinion obtained from experience, the second is reliable knowledge. Although an opinion can receive a very high degree of probability in its content, experience is not, according to Aristotle, the final authority for the reliability of knowledge, for the highest principles of knowledge are contemplated directly by the mind. Aristotle saw the goal of science in a complete definition of the subject, achieved only by combining deduction and induction:
1) knowledge about each individual property must be acquired from experience;
2) the conviction that this property is essential must be proven by an inference of a special logical form of the category, a syllogism.
The study of categorical syllogism carried out by Aristotle in Analytics became, along with the doctrine of evidence, a central part of his logical teaching. Aristotle understood the connection between the three terms of a syllogism as a reflection of the connection between the effect, the cause and the bearer of the cause. The basic principle of a syllogism expresses the connection between genus, species and individual thing. The body of scientific knowledge cannot be reduced to a single system of concepts, because there is no such concept that could be a predicate of all other concepts: therefore, for Aristotle it turned out to be necessary to indicate all the highest categories of categories to which the remaining genera of existence are reduced.
Aristotle's cosmology, for all its achievements (the reduction of the entire sum of visible celestial phenomena and movements of the luminaries into a coherent theory), in some parts was backward in comparison with the cosmology of Democritus and Pythagoreanism. The influence of Aristotle's geocentric cosmology continued until Copernicus. Aristotle was guided by the planetary theory of Eudoxus of Cnidus, but attributed real physical existence to the planetary spheres: The Universe consists of a number of concentric spheres moving at different speeds and driven by the outermost sphere of the fixed stars. The sublunary world, that is, the region between the orbit of the Moon and the center of the Earth, is a region of chaotic, uneven movements, and all bodies in this region consist of the four lower elements: earth, water, air and fire. The earth, as the heaviest element, occupies a central place, above it the shells of water, air and fire are successively located. The superlunar world, that is, the region between the orbit of the Moon and the outer sphere of the fixed stars, is a region of eternally uniform movements, and the stars themselves consist of the fifth, most perfect element of ether.
First steps in systematizing biological knowledge.The biological knowledge of the ancient Greeks, like natural science in general, acquired the signs of science under Aristotle (384-322 BC). Aristotle, a native of Northern Greece, was at one time the tutor of Alexander the Great. The heyday of his creative activity dates back to the time when he taught at the famous school he founded in Athens. Aristotle is one of the most versatile and profound ancient Greek philosophers. His writings cover all areas of knowledge of that time - from physics to literature and from politics to biology. The most famous were his works on physics, relating mainly to the structure of inanimate nature and the processes occurring in it, however, as it turned out later, almost all of them turned out to be incorrect.
The basis of biological knowledge of that era can be considered the “History of Animals,” written by Aristotle in the 330s BC. Aristotle, which took up ten volumes, and the even more astonishing seven anatomical atlases that accompanied it. These works were created by a brilliant scientist based on the study of enormous systematic material. This also explains the concreteness, evidence, and attention to detail in the biological works of the ancient thinker. It is surprising that Aristotle did not rush to conclusions and did not strive for exoticism, as often happened then in science. “One should not childishly neglect the study of insignificant animals,” he writes, “for in every work there is something worthy of surprise.”
Unable to verify all the information provided to him by fishermen and hunters (as “accurate” as in our days), travelers and sailors, old and new scientific works, Aristotle sometimes made mistakes, sometimes unexpected and funny. So, for some reason he believed that women have fewer teeth than men, that the human brain is always cold, and the arteries are filled with air. The latter misconception, however, was then universal, and a special theory was even invented that ingeniously explained why blood gushed from a cut artery that was not there. But how insignificant are these flaws compared to the huge number of discoveries! He noticed the development of drones from unfertilized eggs in bees, discovered the original chewing apparatus of sea urchins, which have since been called Aristotle's lantern, established the heartbeat of a chicken embryo on the third day of development, found a cochlea in the inner ear, discovered a rudimentary eye in a mole, described cases of symbiosis ...
I would like to give an example. In his work, Aristotle states that the female smooth shark lays eggs in her own body, where they are attached to a special placenta. This ancient invention was laughed at for twenty-two centuries, until Johann Muller established that the “father of zoology” was absolutely right about the last century.
The desire for accuracy forced Aristotle to check some information of which he was not sure. Thus, in the “History of Animals”, following Herodotus, he reports that the crocodile does not have a tongue, but in the work “On the Parts of Animals” the error is corrected. It is not surprising that the philosopher’s major work, which described 500 species known at that time, lived a long life. Buffon considered The History of Animals "still perhaps the best work existing on this subject." Cuvier wrote that “it is impossible to understand how one man could collect and compare many particular facts, presupposing numerous general rules.” When reading the high praise of biological luminaries of modern times, one should remember that many of the works of the great philosopher have not reached us. Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle loved to preach orally while walking in the garden of the Lyceum. Therefore, part of his works are short, raw “notes” of students of the Peripatetic school, that is, strollers. As for the philosopher's archive, several centuries passed before it was published. First, the papers went to Theophrastus, who replaced Aristotle at the Lyceum, then to the lyceum student Neleus, who took them to his homeland. After Neleus's death, his relatives kept Aristotle's manuscripts in a damp basement, where many of the leaves rotted or became completely illegible. Then the archive was sold to a certain Athenian bibliophile. And only Sulla, who took in 86 BC. Athens and took Aristotle's works to Rome and ordered them to be published in full.
Aristotle's botanical works have not reached us. And it is unlikely that he had any major works in this area, since his successor Theophrastus, probably in imitation and addition of the teacher’s works, wrote “Description of Plants” and “On the Causes of Plants.” It is possible that the plan for these books was drawn up jointly with Aristotle, since the philosophical schools of antiquity adopted a division of labor into areas of knowledge developed within a single system. There can be no doubt that the great thinker showed a certain interest in botany. There is information about his unsurvived work “De plautis”, which dealt with the structure of plants.
Aristotle's works “History of Animals”, “On the Parts of Animals”, “On the Origin of Animals” are extremely important for the Aristotelian classification system. The ancient thinker clearly formulates his basic methodological principle in “Politics”: “If we wanted to describe the species of animals, we would first have to determine what every animal needs; for example, some of the sense organs and those organs that process and deliver food, such as the mouth and entrails, and in addition, those organs through which each of the animals moves.”
Aristotle's works do not provide a definitive classification in the form to which we are accustomed, but it still seems quite clear. He used only two taxa: species and genus. Moreover, he considers the species as a specific concept, and represents the genus as a certain community from modern subgenera to families. However, further division is planned for the genus; Aristotle distinguishes between minor and major genera. (We should not forget that only Linnaeus introduced the division into classes and other taxa.) His definitions, clear and rigid in other sciences, acquire sufficient flexibility in biology. He even claims that the canon (and “canon” means ruler in Greek) should resemble the pliable lead rulers used by builders on the island of Lesvos. Aristotle repeatedly wrote that there are no sharp boundaries in the plant and animal kingdoms, which means that any division will be artificial. He perfectly remembered the embarrassment that happened to Plato, who fell into the trap of his own dogmatic classification. Diogenes, having learned that Plato defines man as “a two-legged and featherless animal,” brought him a plucked rooster with the words: “Here is Plato’s man!” Aristotle considered the criterion of belonging to one species to be the ability to produce offspring, but with some restrictions. “Mating, in accordance with nature, occurs between homogeneous animals; however, it also occurs in animals that are similar in nature, but not identical in appearance, if they are similar in size and the gestation time is the same.” For this reason, he categorically denied the reality of the existence of the horse deer and the sphinx, in which many ancient scientists believed.
Aristotle initially divided the entire animal kingdom into animals with and without blood. But since he argued that all blood vessels have a backbone, this classification comes close to the division into vertebrates and invertebrates. Within vertebrates, Aristotle distinguishes between viviparous, that is, our mammals, and oviparous, which includes birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish.
But then he meets strange creatures that disrupt the harmony of his system - whales and dolphins. They live in water, their appearance resembles fish, but they give birth to live young, feed them milk and, moreover, lack gills. Aristotle, accustomed to a scalpel, dissects their respiratory tract. And as a result, he classifies them not as fish (as was believed even in the 16th century), but classifies them in a special section - cetaceans. He deals with the bat problem just as decisively. There are no birds with teeth, which means a bat is a mammal with wings. This also includes the seal, which feeds its young with milk.
The ancient philosopher divides the kingdom of bloodless animals into four parts, differing in the way they reproduce: soft-bodied, soft-shelled, insects and deep-skinned. The first two are formed by viviparous creatures, the third by creatures undergoing a stage of transformation, and the last are animals whose mode of reproduction is difficult to establish, and it is even possible that they are self-generated. As is easy to understand from Aristotle’s works, he called the cephalopods that he studied in Lesvos soft-bodied; considered crustaceans to be soft-shelled; He also classified spiders and worms as insects, and considered snails, sea urchins, and other gastropods and bivalves to be skull-skinned. The basis of this hierarchical ladder are, according to Aristotle, ascidians, holothurians, sponges, higher and lower plants, already adjacent to inorganic matter.
The described system was extremely slender and advanced for its time. In addition, very bold ideas were added to it, ahead of their time. For example, Cuvier’s famous principle of correlation was discovered by Aristotle, and the French naturalist’s favorite example of the incompatibility of claws with horns also belongs to the ancient thinker. He did not distinguish man from the animal kingdom, but, comparing his body with that of a monkey, simply placed man on the highest level.
Creating his structure of the animal kingdom, Aristotle, in accordance with his philosophy, wanted to discover in it the final goal, the perfect idea. Such a goal, in his opinion, is man, the crown of creation. He even distinguished three types of soul: a nourishing soul, which appears in plants, a feeling soul, characteristic of animals, and a thinking soul, given only to humans. Aristotle explained human reason not as a divine gift, but by the fact that a person, having risen to his feet, left himself far from the ground. Four-legged animals, existing as if in a recumbent position, cling to the dust and lose the ability to think. Going down the “Aristotelian ladder”, we see how four-legged animals turn into multi-legged ones, then into legless ones and, finally, into plants that have grown into the ground.
But even here, true to his principle of gradualism, he does not draw sharp boundaries, noting, for example, the presence of signs of mental states that are characteristic of man; or comparing the social nature of the behavior of some animals and humans: “12. Those animals are social in which they all perform some single and common task, which does not happen with all herd animals. These are a person, a bee, a wasp, an ant, a crane. And some of the social animals are under the authority of a leader, ... and ants and countless others are without beginning” (Aristotle, “History of Animals,” Book One).
Exploring living nature, Aristotle took the first step towards biological systematics, a section of biology whose task is to describe and designate all existing and extinct organisms, as well as their classification into taxa (groupings) of various ranks. The foundations of this science will be laid later in the works of J. Ray and especially C. Linnaeus.
Considering in “Physics” Aristotle’s objections to materialists who defended the predominant role of chance in the origin of living nature, we can conclude that this is where the great debate begins, whether there is something completely special in living nature that distinguishes it fundamentally from inanimate and makes it inaccessible to the same methods by which the rest of the world is cognized, and therefore systematized. Probably, Aristotle already failed to fit biology into his own famous formal logic, which, due to its rigor, did not require any unnecessary entities, and he “invented” the final goal for nature, giving rise to theology, the doctrine of primordial natural purposiveness.
It was from this ancient Greek that the formation of biology as a science began, and at the same time, discord began in the sciences of living nature, which over time led scientists to the path of systems analysis, through the general theory of systems, close to cybernetics.
Brief biography of Aristotle (BC), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. Born in Stagira. In 367 he went to Athens and, becoming a student of Plato, for 20 years, until Plato’s death, was a member of the Platonic Academy. In 343 he was invited by the king of Macedonia to raise his son. In 335 he returned to Athens and created his own school there (Lyceum, or Peripatetic school). He died in Chalkis on Euboea, where he fled from persecution on charges of a crime against religion. Aristotle (BC), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. Born in Stagira. In 367 he went to Athens and, becoming a student of Plato, for 20 years, until Plato’s death, was a member of the Platonic Academy. In 343 he was invited by the king of Macedonia to raise his son. In 335 he returned to Athens and created his own school there (Lyceum, or Peripatetic school). He died in Chalkis on Euboea, where he fled from persecution on charges of a crime against religion.
Aristotle became one of the founders of science, for the first time summarizing the biological knowledge accumulated by humanity before him. He developed a taxonomy of animals, defining a place in it for man, whom he called “a social animal endowed with reason.” Many of Aristotle's works were devoted to the origin of life. He formulated the theory of continuous and gradual development of living and nonliving matter.
Works of the scientist The works of Aristotle that have reached us are divided according to their content into 7 groups: Logical treatises; Logical treatises; Biological treatises: “History of Animals”, “On the Parts of Animals”, “On the Origin of Animals”, “On the Movement of Animals”; Biological treatises: “History of Animals”, “On the Parts of Animals”, “On the Origin of Animals”, “On the Movement of Animals”; Treatise “On the Soul”; Treatise “On the Soul”; Essay on “first philosophy”; considering existence as such and which later received the name “Metaphysics”; Essay on “first philosophy”; considering existence as such and which later received the name “Metaphysics”; Ethical works - the so-called “Nicomachean Ethics” (dedicated to Nicomacheus, the son of Aristotle) and “Eudemus Ethics” (dedicated to Eudemus, a student of Aristotle); Ethical works - the so-called “Nicomachean Ethics” (dedicated to Nicomacheus, the son of Aristotle) and “Eudemus Ethics” (dedicated to Eudemus, a student of Aristotle); Socio-political and historical works: “Politics”, “The Athenian Polity”. Socio-political and historical works: “Politics”, “The Athenian Polity”.
Aristotle's Biology In the field of biology, one of Aristotle's merits is his doctrine of biological expediency, based on observations of the expedient structure of living organisms. In the field of biology, one of Aristotle’s merits is his doctrine of biological expediency, based on observations of the expedient structure of living organisms. Aristotle saw examples of expediency in nature in such facts as the development of organic structures from a seed, various manifestations of the purposefully acting instinct of animals, the mutual adaptability of their organs, etc. Aristotle saw examples of expediency in nature in such facts as the development of organic structures from a seed, various manifestations of the expediently acting instinct of animals, the mutual adaptability of their organs, etc. In the biological works of Aristotle, which for a long time served as the main source of information on zoology, a classification and description of numerous species of animals was given. In the biological works of Aristotle, which for a long time served as the main source of information on zoology, a classification and description of numerous species of animals was given. The matter of life is the body, the form is the soul, which Aristotle called “entelechy.” The matter of life is the body, the form is the soul, which Aristotle called “entelechy.” According to the three kinds of living beings (plants, animals, humans), Aristotle distinguished three souls, or three parts of the soul: plant, animal (sensing) and rational. According to the three kinds of living beings (plants, animals, humans), Aristotle distinguished three souls, or three parts of the soul: plant, animal (sensing) and rational.
Animal taxonomy The animal system was first developed in the 4th century. BC e. Aristotle, who described more than 450 forms, dividing them into 2 large groups: - animals supplied with blood (vertebrates, according to modern ideas); -bloodless (invertebrates, in the modern sense). -bloodless (invertebrates, in the modern sense). Animals with blood, in turn, were divided by him into groups roughly corresponding to modern classes. With regard to invertebrates, Aristotle's system was less perfect. Thus, among modern types, he more or less correctly identified only arthropods. With regard to invertebrates, Aristotle's system was less perfect. Thus, among modern types, he more or less correctly identified only arthropods.
The theory of spontaneous generation of living beings In his works, Aristotle cites countless “facts” of spontaneous generation of living beings of plants, insects, worms, frogs, mice, some sea animals, indicating the necessary conditions for this in the presence of decomposing organic remains, manure, spoiled meat, various garbage, dirt . Aristotle even provided a certain theoretical basis for these “facts”; he argued that the sudden birth of living beings was caused by nothing more than the influence of some spiritual principle on previously lifeless matter.
But at the same time, Aristotle also expresses quite sound thoughts, close in essence to evolutionary theory: “In addition, it is possible that some bodies from time to time transform into others, and those, in turn, decaying, undergo new transformations, and thus In this way, development and decay balance each other.”
Aristotle's ladder It is also certainly worth noting that Aristotle was the first scientist to express the idea of a “ladder of creatures” (from the less developed and more primitive to the most developed, and in a broader sense from inanimate nature to living). This is what Aristotle's "ladder" looked like: This is what Aristotle's "ladder" looked like: 1) Man; 2) Animals; 2) Animals; 3) Zoophytes; 3) Zoophytes; 4) Plants; 5) Inorganic matter.
