Postponing further reference to this theory until the great name of
Lucretius, its Roman exponent, is reached, we find a genuine scientific
method making its first start in the person of Aristotle. This
remarkable man, the founder of the experimental school, and the Father
of Natural History, was born 384 B. C. at Stagira in Macedonia. In his
eighteenth year he left his native place for Athens, where he became a
pupil of Plato. Disappointed, as it is thought, at not succeeding his
master in the Academy, he removed to Mytilene in the island of Lesbos,
where he received an invitation from Philip of Macedon to become tutor
to his son, the famous Alexander the Great. When Alexander went on his
expedition to Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens, teaching in the
"school" which his genius raised to the first rank. There he wrote the
greater part of his works, the completion of some of which was stopped
by his death at Chalcis in 322. The range of his studies was boundless,
but in this brief notice we must limit our survey--and the more so
because Aristotle's speculations outside natural history abound in
errors--to his pioneer work in organic evolution. Here, in the one
possible method of reaching the truth, theory follows observation.
Stagira lay on the Strymonic gulf, and a boyhood spent by the seashore
gave Aristotle ample opportunity for noting the variations, and withal
gradations, between marine plants and animals, among which last-named it
should be noted as proof of his insight that he was keen enough to
include sponges. Here was laid the foundation of a classification of
life-forms on which all corresponding attempts were based. Then, he
saw, as none other before him had seen, and as none after him saw for
centuries, the force of heredity, that still unsolved problem of
biology. Speaking broadly of his teaching, the details of which would
fill pages, its main features are (1) His insistence on observation. In
his History of Animals he says "we must not accept a general principle
from logic only, but must prove its application to each fact. For it is
in facts that we must seek general principles, and these must always
accord with facts. Experience furnishes the particular facts from which
induction is the pathway to general laws." (2) His rejection of chance
and assertion of law, not, following a common error, of law personified
as cause, but as the term by which we express the fact that certain
phenomena always occur in a certain order. In his Physics Aristotle says
that "Jupiter rains not that corn may be increased, but from necessity.
Similarly, if some one's corn is destroyed by rain, it does not rain
for this purpose, but as an accidental circumstance. It does not appear
to be from fortune or chance that it frequently rains in winter, but
from necessity." (3) On the question of the origin of life-forms he was
nearest of all to its modern solution, setting forth the necessity "that
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