Читать книгу Greek Biology & Greek Medicine онлайн

17 страница из 30

But though the ethical view of nature overwhelmed science in the end, the advent of the mighty figure of Aristotle (384-322) stayed the tide for a time. Yet the writer on Greek Biology remains at a disadvantage in contrast with the Historian of Greek Mathematics, of Greek Astronomy, or of Greek Medicine, in the scantiness of the materials for presenting an account of the development of his studies before Aristotle. The huge form of that magnificent naturalist completely overshadows Greek as it does much of later Biology.

ssss1

With Aristotle we come in sight of the first clearly defined personality in the course of the development of Greek biological thought—for the attribution of the authorship of the earlier Hippocratic writings is more than doubtful, while the personality of the great man by whose name they are called cannot be provided with those clear outlines that historical treatment demands.

Aristotle was born in 384 b. c. at Stagira, a Greek colony in the Chalcidice a few miles from the northern limit of the present monastic settlement of Mount Athos. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas III of Macedonia and a member of the guild or family of the Asclepiadae. From Nicomachus he may have inherited his taste for biological investigation and acquired some of his methods. At seventeen Aristotle became a pupil of Plato at Athens. After Plato’s death in 347 Aristotle crossed the Aegean to reside at the court of Hermias, despot of Atarneus in Mysia, whose niece, Pythias, he married. It is not improbable that the first draft of Aristotle’s biological works and the mass of his own observations were made during his stay in this region, for in his biological writings much attention is concentrated on the natural history of the Island of Lesbos, or Mytilene, that lies close opposite to Atarneus. Investigation has shown that in the History of Animals there are frequent references to places on the northern and eastern littoral of the Aegean, and especially to localities in the Island of Lesbos; on the other hand places in Greece proper are but seldom mentioned.[13] Thus his biological investigations, in outline at least, are probably the earliest of his extant works and preceded the philosophical writings which almost certainly date from his second sojourn in Athens.