Abstract
Science had its origin, if not in opposition to Aristotle, at least in opposition to Aristotelianism. But science in its most authoritative form was what came to be called physics, not biology. Faced with the recent crisis in biology, in which the life sciences have been threatened with reduction to microversions of themselves and ultimately to chemistry and physics, one wonders if the besieged biologists, or at any rate their philosophical defenders, might not after all learn something to their advantage by reflecting on the one great philosopher who was also a great biologist. And we can learn from Aristotle; not, however, in a simple or straightforward fashion. There is no use just contrasting, as some have been tempted to do, Democritean with Aristotelian science and putting physicists in the former class, biologists in the latter. Even if we reject Simpson’s alleged reaffirmation of Roger Bacon and stoutly deny that ‘the study of Aristotle increases ignorance’,1 we must nevertheless admit that in some important respects biology, like all modern science, really is, and must be, un-Aristotelian. This thesis could be defended in a number of ways; let me select four.2
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References
See the exposition of Wieland in the work referred to, note 3, above. For a close study of Aristotle’s use of telos in the explanation of generation, as well as, and in relation to, eidos and hyle, see the excellent paper by Anthony Preus, ‘Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals’, J. Hist. Biol. 3 (1970), 1–52; see also his Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Biology, Darmstadt, in press.
Quoted ibid., pp. 235-236, from A. F. Baker, ‘Purpose and Natural Selection: A Defense of Teleology’, Scientific Journal of the Royal Coll. of Science 4 (1934), 106–119, 107-108.
F. Ayala, ‘Biology as an Autonomous Science’, Amer. Scientist 56 (1968), 207–221.
H. B. D. Kettlewell, ‘Selection experiments on Industrial Melanism in the Lepidop-tera’, Heredity 9 (1955), 323ff.
H. B. D. Kettlewell, ‘A résumé of investigations on the evolution of Melanism in the Lepidoptera’, Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B. 145 (1956), 297ff.
Among biologists critical of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, see for example E. S. Russell, ‘The Diversity of Animals’, Acta Biotheor. 13 (Suppl. 1) (1962), 1–151. Cf. A. Vandel, L’Homme et L’Evolution, Paris, 1949. Among recent philosophers, see M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Chicago and London, 1958 (Torchbook edition: New York, 1962), Ch. 13.
Cf. T. Dobzhansky, ‘On Some Fundamental Concepts of Darwinian Biology’, Evol. Biol. 2 (1968), 1–33, where efforts are made, not wholly successfully, to disentangle some of these concepts.
R. R. Sokal, ‘Typology and Empiricism in Taxonomy’, J. Theoret. Biol., 3 (1962), 230–267.
M. Polanyi, ‘Logic and Psychology’, Amer. Psychologist, 23 (1968), 39–40.
Darwin, Origin of Species, Ch. XV (’species are only well-marked varieties’); Paul R. Ehrlich and Richard W. Holm, ‘Patterns & Populations’, Science 137 (1962), 652–657.
C. F. A. Pantin, ‘The Recognition of Species’, Science Progress 42 (1954), 587–598; cf. his posthumous Tamer lectures, The Relations between the Sciences, Cambridge 1965.
D. Hull, ‘Contemporary Systematic Philosophies’. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1 (1970), pp. 19–54 and M. Starr and H. Heise, op. cit.
M. Polanyi, op. cit., also The Tacit Dimension, New York, 1966. Cf. William T. Scott, ‘Tacit Knowing ana The Concept of Mind’, Phil. Quart. 21 (1971), 22–35.
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© 1976 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Grene, M. (1976). Aristotle and Modern Biology. In: Topics in the Philosophy of Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1829-6_1
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