Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other IllustrationsLocy, William A. (William Albert)
History
Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other Illustrations
Locy, William A. (William Albert)
Biology -- History
Besides great progress in biology, the nineteenth century was
remarkable for similar advances in physics and chemistry. Although
these subjects purport to deal with inorganic or lifeless nature, they
touch biology in an intimate way. The vital processes which take place
in all animals and plants have been shown to be physico-chemical,
and, as a consequence, one must go to both physics and chemistry in
order to understand them. The study of organic chemistry in late
years has greatly influenced biology; not only have living products
been analyzed, but some of them have already been constructed in the
chemical laboratory. The formation of living matter through chemical
means is still far from the thought of most chemists, but very complex
organic compounds, which were formerly known only as the result of the
action of life, have been produced, and the possibilities of further
advances in that direction are very alluring. It thus appears that
the discoveries in various fields have worked together for a better
comprehension of nature.
The Domain of Biology.--The history of the transformation of opinion in
reference to living organisms is an interesting part of the story of
intellectual development. The central subject that embraces it all is
biology. This is one of the fundamental sciences, since it embraces all
questions relating to life in its different phases and manifestations.
Everything pertaining to the structure, the development, and the
evolution of living organisms, as well as to their physiology,
belongs to biology. It is now of commanding importance in the world
of science, and it is coming more and more to be recognized that it
occupies a field of compelling interest not only for medical men and
scholars, but for all intelligent people. The discoveries and conquests
of biology have wrought such a revolution in thought that they should
be known to all persons of liberal culture. In addition to making
acquaintance with the discoveries, one ought to learn something about
the history of biology; for it is essential to know how it took its
rise, in order to understand its present position and the nature of its
influence upon expanding ideas regarding the world in which we live.
In its modern sense, biology did not arise until about 1860, when the
nature of protoplasm was first clearly pointed out by Max Schultze,
but the currents that united to form it had long been flowing, and
we can never understand the subject without going back to its iatric
condition, when what is now biology was in the germ and united with
medicine. Its separation from medicine, and its rise as an independent
subject, was owing to the steady growth of that zest for exploration
into unknown fields which began with the new birth of science in the
sixteenth century, and has continued in fuller measure to the present.
It was the outcome of applying observation and experiment to the
winning of new truths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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