The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
What is science? It is a question that cannot be answered easily, nor
perhaps answered at all. None of the definitions seem to cover the field
exactly; they are either too wide or too narrow. But we can see science
in its growth and we can say that being a process it can exist only as
growth. Where does the science of biology begin? Again we cannot say,
but we can watch its evolution and its progress. Among the Greeks the
accurate observation of living forms, which is at least one of the
essentials of biological science, goes back very far. The word
_Biology_, used in our sense, would, it is true, have been an
impossibility among them, for _bios_ refers to the life of man and could
not be applied, except in a strained or metaphorical sense, to that of
other living things.[6] But the _ideas_ we associate with the word are
clearly developed in Greek philosophy and the foundations of biology are
of great antiquity.
[6] The word _Biology_ was introduced by Gottfried Reinhold
Treviranus (1776-1837) in his _Biologie oder die Philosophie der
lebenden Natur_, 6 vols., Göttingen, 1802-22, and was adopted by
J.-B. de Lamarck (1744-1829) in his _Hydrogéologie_, Paris, 1802. It
is probable that the first English use of the word in its modern
sense is by Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) in his work _On the
Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man_, London, 1819;
there are earlier English uses of the word, however, contrasted with
_biography_.
The Greek people had many roots, racial, cultural, and spiritual, and
from them all they inherited various powers and qualities and derived
various ideas and traditions. The most suggestive source for our purpose
is that of the Minoan race whom they dispossessed and whose lands they
occupied. That highly gifted people exhibited in all stages of its
development a marvellous power of graphically representing animal forms,
of which the famous Cretan friezes, Vaphio cups (Fig. 5), and Mycenean
lions provide well-known examples. It is difficult not to believe that
the Minoan element, entering into the mosaic of peoples that we call the
Greeks, was in part at least responsible for the like graphic power
developed in the Hellenic world, though little contact has yet been
demonstrated between Minoan and archaic Greek Art.
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