Biology story

Biology story

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History of biology - Wikipedia

The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to ayurvedaancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world.

This ancient work was further developed in the Middle Ages by Muslim physicians and scholars such as Avicenna. During the Biology story Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and Harveybiology story, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil recordas well as the development and behavior of organisms, biology story.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek revealed by means of microscopy the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell biology story. The growing importance of natural theologybiology story a response to the rise of mechanical philosophyencouraged the growth of natural history although it entrenched the argument from design. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines.

Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for biogeographyecology and ethology.

Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life, biology story. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontologywere synthesized in Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution by natural selection. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of diseasethough the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery.

In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics by Thomas Hunt Morgan and biology story students, and by the s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the " neo-Darwinian synthesis ". New disciplines developed rapidly, especially after Watson and Crick proposed the structure of DNA. Following the establishment of the Central Dogma and the cracking of the genetic codebiology was largely split between organismal biology story —the fields that deal with whole organisms and groups of organisms—and the fields related to cellular and molecular biology.

By the late 20th century, new fields like genomics and proteomics were reversing this trend, with organismal biologists using molecular techniques, and molecular and cell biologists investigating the interplay between genes and the environment, as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.

The earliest humans must have had and passed on knowledge about plants and animals to increase their chances of survival, biology story.

This may have included knowledge of human and animal anatomy and aspects of animal behavior such as migration patterns, biology story. However, the first major turning point in biological knowledge came with the Neolithic Revolution about 10, biology story, biology story ago. Humans first domesticated plants for farming, then livestock animals to accompany the resulting sedentary societies. In around to BCEthe Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians made contributions to astronomybiology story, mathematicsbiology story, and medicine[2] [3] which later entered and shaped Greek biology story philosophy of classical antiquitya period that profoundly influenced the development of what came to be known as biology.

Over a dozen medical papyri have been preserved, most notably the Edwin Smith Papyrus the oldest extant surgical handbook and the Ebers Papyrus a handbook of preparing and using materia medica for biology story diseasesboth from around BCE. Ancient Egypt is also known for developing embalmingwhich was used for mummificationin order to preserve human remains and forestall decomposition. The Mesopotamians seem to have had little interest in the natural world as such, preferring to study how the gods biology story ordered the universe.

Animal physiology was studied for divinationbiology story, including especially the anatomy of the liverseen as an important organ in haruspicy. Animal behavior too was studied for divinatory purposes. Most information about the training and domestication of animals was probably transmitted orally, but one text dealing with the training of horses has survived, biology story.

The ancient Mesopotamians had no distinction between "rational science" and magic. These physicians, who could be either male or female, also dressed wounds, set limbs, and performed simple surgeries.

The ancient Mesopotamians also practiced prophylaxis and took measures to prevent the spread of disease. Observations and theories regarding nature and human health, biology story, separate from Western traditionshad emerged independently in other civilizations such as those in China and the Indian subcontinent.

The Taoist tradition of Chinese alchemyfor example, emphasized health with the ultimate goal being the elixir of life. The system of classical Chinese medicine usually revolved around the theory of yin and yangand the five phases. One of the oldest organised systems of medicine is known from ancient India in the form of Ayurvedawhich originated around BCE from Atharvaveda one of the four most ancient books biology story Indian knowledge, wisdom and culture.

The ancient Indian Ayurveda tradition independently developed the concept of three humours, resembling that of the four humours of ancient Greek medicinethough the Ayurvedic system included further complications, such as the body being composed of five elements and seven basic tissues.

Biology story also made considerable advances in the field of surgeryoften without the use of human dissection or animal vivisection. It was also an early materia medicadescribing medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 preparations based on animal sources. The pre-Socratic philosophers asked many questions about life but produced little systematic knowledge of specifically biological interest—though the attempts of the atomists to explain life in purely physical terms would recur periodically through the history of biology.

However, the medical theories of Hippocrates and his followers, especially humorismhad a lasting impact. The philosopher Aristotle was the most influential scholar of the living world from classical antiquity. Though his early work in natural philosophy was speculative, Aristotle's later biological writings were more empirical, focusing on biological causation and the diversity biology story life.

He made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals in the world around him, which he devoted considerable attention to categorizing, biology story. In all, Aristotle classified animal species, and dissected at least He believed that intellectual purposes, biology story, formal causesguided all natural processes. Aristotle, and nearly all Western scholars after him until the 18th century, believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to humans: the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.

Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed biology story. Dioscorides wrote a pioneering and encyclopaedic pharmacopoeiaDe Materia Medicabiology story, incorporating descriptions of some plants and their uses biology story medicine.

Pliny the Elder biology story, in his Natural Historyassembled a similarly encyclopaedic account of things in nature, including accounts biology story many plants and animals. A few scholars in the Hellenistic period under the Ptolemies —particularly Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Chios —amended Aristotle's physiological work, even performing dissections and vivisections.

Though a few ancient atomists such as Biology story challenged biology story teleological Aristotelian viewpoint that all aspects of life are the result of design biology story purpose, teleology and after the rise of Christianitynatural theology would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ernst W. Mayr argued that "Nothing of any real consequence happened in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance.

The decline of the Roman Empire led to the disappearance or destruction of much knowledge, though physicians still incorporated many aspects of the Greek tradition into training and practice. In Byzantium and the Islamic world, many of the Greek works were translated into Arabic and many of the works of Aristotle were preserved. During the High Middle Agesa few European scholars such as Hildegard of BingenAlbertus Magnus and Frederick II wrote on natural history.

The rise of European universitiesbiology story important for the development of physics and philosophy, had little impact on biological scholarship. The European Renaissance brought expanded interest in both empirical natural history and physiology. InAndreas Vesalius inaugurated the modern era of Western medicine with his seminal human anatomy treatise De humani corporis fabricawhich was based on dissection of corpses.

Vesalius was the first in a series of anatomists who gradually replaced scholasticism with empiricism in physiology and medicine, relying on first-hand experience rather than authority and abstract reasoning. Via herbalismbiology story, medicine was also indirectly the source of renewed empiricism in the study of plants. Otto BrunfelsHieronymus Bock and Leonhart Fuchs wrote extensively on wild plants, the beginning of a nature-based approach to the full range of plant life.

Artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vincioften working with naturalists, biology story, were also interested in the bodies of animals and humans, studying physiology in detail and contributing to the growth of anatomical knowledge. Alchemists subjected organic matter to chemical analysis and experimented liberally with both biological and mineral pharmacology.

Systematizingnaming and classifying dominated natural history throughout much of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Carl Linnaeus published a basic taxonomy for the natural world in variations of which have been in use ever sinceand in the s introduced scientific names for all his species. Though he was opposed to evolution, biology story, Buffon is a key figure in the history of evolutionary thought ; his work would influence the evolutionary theories of both Lamarck and Darwin. The discovery and description of new species and the collection of specimens became a passion of scientific gentlemen and a lucrative enterprise for entrepreneurs; many naturalists traveled the globe in search of scientific knowledge and adventure.

Extending the work of Vesalius into experiments on still living bodies of both humans and animalsWilliam Harvey and other natural philosophers investigated the roles of blood, veins and arteries.

Harvey's De motu cordis in was the beginning of the end for Galenic theory, biology story, and alongside Santorio Biology story 's studies of metabolism, it served as an influential model of quantitative approaches to physiology, biology story.

In the early 17th century, biology story, the micro-world of biology was just beginning to open up. A few lensmakers and natural philosophers had been creating crude microscopes since biology story late 16th century, and Robert Hooke published the seminal Micrographia based on observations with his own compound microscope in But it was not until Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 's dramatic improvements in lensmaking beginning in the s—ultimately producing up to fold magnification with a single lens—that scholars discovered spermatozoabacteriainfusoria and the sheer strangeness and diversity of microscopic life.

Similar investigations by Jan Swammerdam led to new interest in entomology and built the basic techniques of microscopic dissection and staining. As the microscopic world was biology story, the macroscopic world was shrinking, biology story. Botanists such as John Ray worked to incorporate the flood of newly discovered organisms shipped from across the globe into a coherent taxonomy, biology story, and a coherent theology natural theology.

Although Steno's ideas about fossilization were well known and much debated among natural philosophers, biology story, an organic origin for all fossils would not be accepted by all naturalists until the end of the 18th century biology story to philosophical and theological debate about issues such as the age of the earth and extinction.

Up through the 19th century, the scope of biology was largely divided between medicine, which investigated questions of form and function i.

Bymuch of these domains overlapped, while natural history and its counterpart natural philosophy had largely given way to more specialized scientific disciplines— cytologybacteriologymorphologyembryologybiology storyand geology. The term biology in its modern sense appears to have been introduced independently by Thomas Beddoes in[33] Karl Friedrich Burdach inGottfried Reinhold Treviranus Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Naturand Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Hydrogéologie Before biology story, there were several terms used for the study of biology story and plants.

Natural history referred to the descriptive aspects of biology, though it also included mineralogy and other non-biological fields; from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, biology story unifying framework of biology story history was the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being. Natural philosophy and natural theology encompassed the conceptual and metaphysical basis of plant and animal life, dealing with problems of why organisms exist and behave the way they do, though these subjects also included what is now geologyphysicschemistryand astronomy.

Physiology and botanical pharmacology were the province of medicine. Botanyzoologyand in the biology story of fossils geology replaced natural history and natural philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries before biology was widely biology story. Widespread travel by naturalists in the early-to-midth century resulted in a wealth of new information about the diversity and distribution of living organisms.

Of particular importance was the work of Alexander biology story Humboldtwhich analyzed the relationship between organisms and their environment i. Humboldt's work laid the foundations of biogeography and inspired several generations of scientists, biology story. The emerging discipline of geology also brought natural history and natural philosophy closer together; the establishment of the stratigraphic column linked the spatial distribution of organisms to their temporal biology story, a key precursor to concepts of evolution.

Georges Cuvier and others made great strides biology story comparative anatomy and paleontology in the late s and early 19th century, biology story.

In a series of lectures and papers that made detailed comparisons between living mammals and fossil remains Cuvier was able to establish that the fossils were remains of species that had become extinct —rather than being remains of species still alive elsewhere in the world, as had been widely believed, biology story.

These discoveries captured the public imagination and focused attention on the history of life on earth. The most significant evolutionary theory before Darwin's was that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck ; based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics an inheritance mechanism that was widely accepted until the 20th centuryit described a chain biology story development stretching from the lowliest microbe to humans.

The publication of Darwin's theory in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, biology story, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life is often considered the central event in the history of modern biology.

Darwin's established credibility as a naturalist, the sober tone of the work, and most of all the sheer strength and volume of evidence presented, allowed Origin to succeed where previous evolutionary works such as the anonymous Vestiges of Creation had failed.

Most scientists were convinced of evolution and common descent by the end of the 19th century. However, natural selection would not be accepted as the primary mechanism of evolution until well into the 20th century, as most contemporary theories of heredity seemed incompatible with the inheritance of random variation. Wallace, following on biology story work by de CandolleHumboldt and Darwin, biology story, made major contributions to zoogeography.

The Insane Biology of: The Octopus

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Biology of Story

Sep 10,  · Biology News. New Species of Freshwater Crayfish Discovered in Australia. Sep 30, by News Staff / Source. Scientists have described Biology news and videos from research institutes around the world. Updated blogger.comg: story Oct 02,  · Biology. More. Science News. Dwindling Alaska Salmon Leave Yukon River Tribes in Crisis. Two salmon species have all but disappeared from