Form and Function | Page 9

put in the De Partibus (ii., 10, 656^a, trans. Ogle), "Plants,
again, inasmuch as they are without locomotion, present no great
variety in their heterogeneous parts. For, where the functions are but
few, few also are the organs required to effect them.... Animals,
however, that not only live but feel, present a greater multiformity of

parts, and this diversity is greater in some animals than in others, being
most varied in those to whose share has fallen not mere life but life of
high degree. Now such an animal is man."
With the great exception of Aristotle, the philosophers of Greece and
Rome made little contribution to morphological theory. Passing
mention may be made of the Atomists--Leucippus, Democritus, and
their great disciple Lucretius, who in his magnificent poem "De Natura
Rerum" gave impassioned expression to the materialistic conception of
the universe. But the full effect of materialism upon morphology does
not become apparent till the rise of physiology in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and reaches its culmination in the 19th century. The
evolutionary ideas of Lucretius exercised no immediate influence upon
the development of morphology.
[1] E. Zeller, Greek Philosophy, Eng. trans., i., 522 f.n., London 1881.
Other particulars as to Alcmaeon in T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng.
trans., i., London, 1901.
[2] Zeller, loc. cit., i., p. 297.
[3] Gomperz, loc. cit., i., p. 244.
[4] R. Burckhardt, Biologie u. Humanismus, p. 85, Jena, 1907.
[5] See the interesting account of Aristotle's biological work in Prof.
D'Arcy W. Thompson's Herbert Spencer lecture (1913) and his
translation of the Historia Animalium in the Oxford series.
[6] On Aristotle's forerunners, see R. Burckhardt, "Das koïsche
Tiersystem, eine Vorstufe des zoologischen Systematik des
Aristoteles." Verh. Naturf. Ges. Basel, xx., 1904.
[7] T.E. Lones, Aristotle's Researches in Natural Science, pp. 82-3,
London, 1912.
[8] De Partibus Animalium, i., 4, 644^a trans. W. Ogle, Oxford, 1911.

CHAPTER II
COMPARATIVE ANATOMY BEFORE CUVIER
For two thousand years after Aristotle little advance was made upon his
comparative anatomy. Knowledge of the human body was increased
not long after his death by Herophilus and Erasistratus, but not even
Galen more than four centuries later made any essential additions to
Aristotle's anatomy.
During the Middle Ages, particularly after the introduction to Europe in
the 13th century of the Arab texts and commentaries, Aristotle
dominated men's thoughts of Nature. The commentary of Albertus
Magnus, based upon that of Avicenna, did much to impose Aristotle
upon the learned world. Albertus seems to have contented himself with
following closely in the footsteps of his master. There are noted,
however, by Bonnier certain improvements made by Albertus on
Aristotle's view of the seriation of living things. "He is the first," writes
Bonnier, "to take the correct view that fungi are lower plants allied to
the most lowly organised animals. From this point there start, for
Albertus Magnus, two series of living creatures, and he regards the
plant series as culminating in the trees which have well-developed
flowers."[9]
Aristotle's influence is predominant also in the work of Edward Wotton
(1492-1555), who in his book De differentiis animalium adopted a
classification similar to that proposed by Aristotle. He too laid stress
upon the gradation shown from the lower to the higher forms.
In the 16th century, two groups of men helped to lay foundations for a
future science of comparative anatomy--the great Italian anatomists
Vesalius, Fallopius and Fabricius, and the first systematists (though
their "systems" were little more than catalogues) Rondeletius,
Aldrovandus and Gesner.
The anatomists, however, took little interest in problems of pure
morphology; the anatomy of the human body was for them simply the
necessary preliminary of the discovery of the functions of the

parts--they were quite as much physiologists as anatomists.
One of them, Fabricius, made observations on the development of the
chick (1615). Harvey, who was a pupil of Fabricius, likewise published
an account of the embryology of the chick.[10] In his philosophy and
habit of thought Harvey was a follower of Aristotle. It is worth noting
that in his Exercitationes anatomicae de motu cordis (1628) there is a
passage which dimly foreshadows the law of recapitulation in
development which later had so much vogue.[11]
A stimulating contribution to comparative anatomy was made by
Belon,[12] who published in 1555 a Histoire de la nature des Oyseaux,
in which he showed opposite one another a skeleton of a bird and of a
mammal, giving the same names to homologous bones. The anatomy of
animals other than man was indeed not altogether neglected at this time.
Coiter (1535-1600) studied the anatomy of Vertebrates, discovering
among other things the fibrous structure of the brain. Carlo Ruini of
Bologna wrote in 1598 a book on the anatomy of the horse.[13]
Somewhat later Severino, professor at Naples, dissected many animals
and came to the conclusion that they