Plato
Plato was born in Athens to a noble
family. Even as a young boy he had absorbed all the culture of his time and was
thoroughly acquainted with classical Greek literature, which he frequently and
aptly quoted.
The Peloponnesian war and Socrates
were the two major influences on Plato was about twenty when he met Socrates,
whose technique was to ask a series of searching questions, which stimulated
the mental process of inquiry. Thus Socrates, who always sought precise
definitions, bequeathed a method.
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| Plato |
After the execution of Socrates, Plato
left Athens for a prolonged period of travel in Greece, Egypt, Italy and Sicily.
At the age of forty, he returned to Athens and established his famous academy.
He was associated with it for forty years. His aim was to make philosophers and
statesmen.
The theory of ideas was the most
celebrated contribution of Plato to philosophy. It dominated his thoughts on
every subject. For him, the material world around us is subject to corruption
and death and unworthy of inquiry. So Plato’s idealistic philosophy made earth-bound scientific knowledge impossible.
It is remarkable that, unlike those of other ancient writers,
the works of Plato have survived virtually intact. The Timaeus is regarded as Plato’s
work dealing with his views on science.
Plato’s science is for the most part
fantastic, bearing little resemblance to modern science. He emphatically
rejects the practice of experimentation as impious. Only pure mathematics is to
be tolerated. He condemned the use of instruments except the ruler and the
compass.
Plato’s chief purpose in studying cosmos was to show the law
and order, and harmony and rhythm prevailing in it. “By learning to keep in
tune with this cosmic harmony, men day discover a pattern for their own souls
and emotions”. But it had a deleterious effect as Sarton points out: “The
astrological nonsense that has done so much harm to the western world and is
still poisoning weak-minded people today was derived from the Timaeus, and
Plato’s astrology was itself an offshoot of the Babylonian one”.
In fact, Plato’s exotic hypotheses were accepted as scientific truth during the Middle
Ages, which found in the Timaeus the trinity, the cross of the Christ, and the Holy
Ghost, Kepler too accepted without question the platonic idea of universal
harmony in the cosmic order.
Aristotle
Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the
Great. He was the first universal man in the breadth of his interests. More
than 400 books are ascribed to him, and they encompass every imaginable aspect
of learning: logic, ethics, economics, politics, metaphysics, literature,
mechanics, physics, astronomy, botany, zoology and psychology.
As a philosopher, he had the conviction that unity and order prevail in the universe. Despite the
loss of many of his works due to the ravages of time, the surviving works
reveal his prodigious erudition and versatile mind. Of his many works, here
we are concerned with those that relate to the material sciences and zoology.
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| Aristotle |
Like
Hippocrates in medicine, Aristotle was the first great one in biology and
remained the greatest in that field for two thousand years. His writings show
the breadth of his biological interests. Charles Darwin said, “Linnaeus and Cuvier
have been my two gods, though in very different ways, they were mere,
schoolboys to old Aristotle”.
Because of
religious taboos he could not dissect and study human physiology. This
restriction accounts for several errors in these theories on physiology.
Some of his propositions, which today we know as absurd, are: the heart is the
scat of intelligence and the brain’s function is to cool the heart; man has
only eight ribs on each side; woman has fewer teeth than man; the egg is not at
first a living thing; the female offspring are imperfect or incomplete men;
there is no essential difference between arteries and veins; and so on.
Aristotle’s
classification of animal species contributed to the development of the
biological sciences. In this new field, his contributions remained the most significant
up to the time of Linnaeus, some 2000 years later.
He mentions about 540
different animals, some of which are based on the traveller’s takes on legendary
lore; but most are based on personal observation and nearly fifty species from knowledge gained by dissection.
He obtained information from herdsmen,
fishermen and hunters too. Based on all these he wrote several treatises on
biology, such as the history of animals, the Progression of animals, the generation of
animals etc.
Theophrastus (the
father of botany)
This Greek
philosopher laid the foundation stone for the scientific study of plant life. He
was a student of Plato and a fellow student of Aristotle. Being about
fifteen years junior to Aristotle, he became the latter’s student after the
death of Plato.
Aristotle gave him the nickname Theophrastus (divine of
speech), nominated him the head of his famous lyceum, and designated him
guardian of his children. He also bequeathed him his library and garden. All
these are evidence of Aristotle’s high esteem for Theophrastus.
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| Theophrastus |
Theophrastus was as prolific and versatile a writer as
Aristotle. He wrote nearly 227 treatises on varied subjects like religion,
politics, ethics, mathematics, rhetoric, logic, music, poetry, love, astronomy
and so on. The most important of his works are two large botanical treatises
called, on the history of plants and on the causes of plants.
Both these are
the most significant contributions to botanical science during ancient and
medieval times. They became the ultimate authority of all botanical science
during ancient and medieval times. They became the ultimate authority of all
botanical matters for the next two thousand years.
Theophrastus
did not journey much in foreign lands. He relied much on information brought to
him by his students and other travellers. For example, his sponsor Alexander the
Great took scientifically trained observers with him to Persia and India, and
these men provided Theophrastus with descriptions of plants like cotton, banyan,
coconut, pepper, cinnamon etc. in the course of his collecting information, he
gathered a lot of curious folklore and superstitions associated with plants.
Though he did not believe them, he recorded them as they were too interesting
to omit. Generally, the folk believed that if taboos were broken, the herbs
collected would lose their efficacy.
Aristotle taught Theophrastus the role of classification in
science. So, Theophrastus classified nearly five hundred plants based on their
characteristic features.
He gave them special botanical names, besides their
common names. His discovery of the process of pollination was soon completely
neglected by his successors and Parkinson, a 17th-century English
herbalist, ridiculed it as a fable.
Theophrastus
discusses in detail the damage to plants and farm crops by insects, worms and
other parasites. He has noted the particular pest that damages a particular
plant and the measures to control them. He was also sure of the geographical
distribution of plants according to soil and climate.
The amount of
information he was able to compile is really astounding, especially given
his lack of scientific instruments. In his time botany was a field unheard of.
Little was added to his findings in the Middle Ages.
So he was the first and
the greatest botanist until the Renaissance. “The botany of Theophrastus and
the zoology of Aristotle represent the climax of natural history in antiquity”.
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