Aristotle as a biologist, not just a marine biologist

Darwin held Aristotle in high regard as a naturalist. In an oft-quoted letter, he explained: Linnaeus and Cuvuer were two deities to me, albeit in very different ways. But they themselves were hardly more than disciples compared to the old Aristotle . Also, such minds as Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire, Agassiz, John Herschel, and, from closer to us, science historians Gomperz, d’Arcy Thompson, David Ross and Thomas Kuhn praised him as the founder of biology.

The beginnings of the sciences of life existed earlier, of course, in the form of empirical folk knowledge and the primers of medicine codified by Hippocrates. However, it was not until Stagyrates that biological issues became an independent science in their own right. It was he who initiated anatomy, physiology or animal ecology. With his efforts, he developed these departments to a level that lasted for many centuries. His favorite disciple and successor Theophrastus of Eresos will lay the foundations of today’s botany [5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12].

Living treasures of the seas in the writings of the Stagirite

Even modern biologists find it hard to remain indifferent to the passion with which Stagirite depicts the life of the Mediterranean. There is something cool for everyone! Fans of hard-headedness, statistics and mathematical methods in biology will like the Aristotelian diagrams and matrix-like elaborate lists of various types of milk or rennet. For lovers of more epic field ecology, the descriptions of the behavior of various sea creatures, such as cephalopods, are enchanting; when a female cuttlefish is stabbed with a trident, the male waits to help her, but when it is the male who is stabbed, the female runs away. The same enthusiasm pervades descriptions of the parental affection of dolphins as the world’s first characterization of the structure and function of the chewing apparatus of sea urchins. The latter is still called, in honor of the author of Zoology and On the Birth of Animals, Aristotle’s lanternfly [1, 2, 8, 12].

Historians of science have been struck by the timelessness and relevance of a multitude of observations and zoological conclusions, especially against the backdrop of the shoals of Aristotelian physics and its negative role in the further development of dynamics and astronomy. This contrast led Kuhn to formulate the basis of his system of scientific revolutions. He proceeded from the assumption that Stagirite physics and chemistry were not so bad. He simply grasped the phenomenon of motion more broadly. For us and for generations of historians of science, motion is only a change in position over time. For Aristotle, however, motion is synonymous with change, any change, from the aging of man to the souring of wine to the rising and setting of the sun. He did, after all – and in the names of his treatises – distinguish between the broadly understood movement of animals and their spatial movement, i.e. movements in the narrower, closer to our terminology, sense! [1, 2, 7, 8, 9]

As a token of the philosopher’s appreciation as a marine biologist, the cormorant was named Gulosus aristotelis in Latin [6].

Aristotle’s systematics: common sense on turbocharging

Aristotle’s classification of animals still meets with acclaim. In the nineteenth century, it was believed that the Stagirite unknowingly came almost to the discovery of the principles of natural classification. The divisions he introduced into:

• Blood-less (modern vertebrates and vertebrates);
• viviparous-oviviparous;
• Ungulates into even- and odd-numbered ungulates;
• insects into winged and wingless

after some modifications have persisted to the present day, at least for the use of young people studying. Recognizing in those days the similarity of cetaceans to land mammals and seals is impressive. So is the admiration for cephalopods, to which we are only today willing to grant some of the rights of vertebrates. His hypothesis about the fundamental similarity of vertebrate blood to the non-red body fluids of invertebrates, as fulfilling the same role in the body, also proved surprisingly accurate [5, 8, 11, 12].

An important achievement of Aristotle’s taxonomy was the division into genera and species. The terms genos (genus) and eidos (species) have received rich commentaries. It is noteworthy that even Charles Linnaeus, the creator of modern classification and binary nomenclature, used the terms genos and eidos in an almost identical manner to the Stagirite. On the other hand, critics of Aristotelianism had use for the ambiguity of Aristotelian eidos, once meaning form and at other times species [3, 5, 8, 12].

According to him, different species classified in the same genus differed only by the surplus or deficiency of a certain characteristic, e.g.: roughness/smoothness of the skin, longer/shorter fins or hardness/softness of the carapace. Stagyrates based the similarities between different kinds of animals on analogies between the functions of their characteristic organs. He saw such an analogy between the scales of fish and the feathers of birds, since they perform the same functions in a general sense: covering, camouflage and decoration. Aristotle, unlike his teacher Plato and the priests of the ancient East, did not base genus or species differences on environment (aquatic-terrestrial), behavior and utility to humans (wild-domesticated) or ritual purity (clean-unclean) [1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12].

A spoonful of tar in a barrel of honey

Having discussed the advantages of Aristotle’s system, let’s turn to the shortcomings. Siwek considered the lack of broader, more general classificatory units: families, orders and classes (clusters) to be an important weakness of the Stagirite’s zoology. The other major drawback of his biology was to be the frequent use of folk, specialized, indigenous terminology. Today, some naturalists would consider this an advantage – Professor Dzik encourages the adoption of local names. The Stagirite knew how to and liked to invent new philosophical and technical terms, such as entelechy in his treatise On the Soul.

Meanwhile, in the field of natural sciences, he preferred the tried-and-true terms of fishermen and farmers, hunters and butchers. At the time, this facilitated the wide reception of his works among people of different professions and languages. Later, however, it became a translators’ nightmare. Such a great polyglot and erudite scholar as Siwek, who translated the Greek text into Latin, not just into Polish, had to consult professional faunists, especially the now-forgotten vireo researcher Cezary Dziadosz. To justify the translators, we should add that faunal terminology is still a nightmare for non-naturalists today. The names of plants and animals from the Bible are even more difficult to translate [4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12].

Constancy and variability of species

Stagyreth’s ladder of being (chain of entities) is still controversial among historians of biology and philosophers today. The presence of intermediate links between seemingly dissimilar genera, even between plants and animals (sponges, anemones), makes some researchers see here the possibility of transformation of one species into another. This is how Darwin and his followers must have treated it. Nevertheless, according to Siwek, one should not conceive of this chain of entities in an evolutionary, transformist sense, since, according to the Stargyrite, species B will never arise from species A. For they are all eternal and unchanging. To find certain, rational knowledge by empirical means, i.e. observation of living organisms and experiments on them – this is Aristotelianism, and later Darwinism and neo-Darwinism, among others [1, 2, 5, 6, 11].

Darwin in the old Aristotle, after all, so disliked in the Age of Enlightenment precursor of the darkness of the Middle Ages (geocentrism; physics and medicine based on the theory of the four elements prevailing in the sublunar world; verbalism and unnecessary multiplication of entities, which later had to be cut out with Ockham’s razor), and to this boredom, were also attracted:

• enthusiasm for classifying organisms;
• A teleological approach to animals, especially the characterization of their organs in terms of structure and function, the purposefulness of the construction of individual organs.

Stagyrates owes more than that:

• a host of previously unfamiliar concepts still commonly used today such as: form, matter, energy, potential;
• a new take on the soul as the form and organizer of the organic body, to which Crick will return with DNA as the soul in The Astonishing Hypothesis;
• A detailed study of logic and psychology;
• considerations of causality, especially the distinction of four causes: formal, material, causal and intentional;

but also the foundations of marine biology and limnology [1, 2, 3, 10, 11].

Photo. main: MPF – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=284797

In the article, I used, among other things. z:

1. Aristotle (2003a). Complete Works, vol. 3, On the Soul. Short psychological and biological treatises. Zoology. On the parts of animals. Translation, introductions and comments by P. Siwek. Published. Naukowe PWN, W-wa.
2. Aristotle (2003b). Complete Works, vol. 4. On the movement of animals. On the spatial movement of animals. On the birth of animals. …On Melissos, Xenophanes and Gorgias. Translation, introductions and commentaries by A. Paciorek, L. Regner and P. Siwek. Published. Naukowe PWN, W-wa.
3. Balme D. (1962). ΓΕΝΟΣ and ΕΙΔΟΣ in Aristotle’s Biology. The Classical Quarterly, 12(1), 81-98.
4. Boar J. (2015). Zoology. Diversity and affinities of animals. Published. UW, W-wa.
5. Grene M. (1972). Aristotle and modern biology. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(3), 395-424.
6. Huxley R. (ed.) (2007). The great naturalists. From Aristotle to Darwin. Published. Naukowe PWN, W-wa.
7. Kuhn T. (2003). The road after structure. Philosophical essays from 1970-1993 and an interview-thriller with the author of the famous “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Published. Sic! W-wa.
8. Lennox J. (2006). Aristotle’s biology https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/aristotle-biology/
9. Russo L. (2005) The forgotten revolution. Greek scientific thought and modern science. Universitas, Cracow.
10. Tatarkiewicz W. (1998). History of philosophy. Volume one. Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Published. PWN Sciences, W-wa.
11. Torrey H. & Felin F. (1937). Was Aristotle an Evolutionist? The Quarterly Review of Biology, 12(1), 1-18.
12. Urbanek A. (2007). There is only one animal…Thoughts on comparative biology. MiIZ PAN, W-wa.