Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/63

 Aristotle's biology constituents and processes of the world. It was pursued by men whom we have been taught to call philosophers ; and in fact only gradually did philosophy, more properly speaking, dif- ferentiate itself from physics, that is, from the elemental attempt to observe and know the physical world, Greek philosophy was to con- sist of logical and metaphysical conceptions; Greek physical, or let us say specifically bio- logical, science was to continue as observation and induction. Yet it did not part company from philosophy, and occasionally employed the same processes of logic and even meta- physics. The same men might still be both scientists and philosophers — or metaphysi- cians. The greatest of Greek biologists was very nearly the greatest of Greek philosophers; and Aristotle the biologist did not abjure the logical and metaphysical reasonings of Aris- totle the philosopher.^^ But modern biology, if we fix our eyes upon its most fecund inceptions and vigorous growth, was departmental or special from the begin- ning, and alien from those sweeping explana- tions and ultimate accountings which seemed to constitute philosophy. In this sense, neither Leonardo nor Vesalius nor Harvey was a phi- [41]