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The science of biology as such did not exist in the early modern period; the term biology itself came into use only around 1800. Nonetheless, research in subjects now encompassed by biology was avidly pursued, principally by physicians but also by natural philosophers. The philosopher of science Francis Bacon (15611626) called for intensified descriptive study of physical forms ("natural history") and the analytical study of their functions, classified as part of "physic." Institutional sites for inquiry included the universities, with those in southern Europe dominant earlier and those in northern Europe later in the period. Private individuals often worked with the support of aristocratic, princely, and ecclesiastical patrons. In the seventeenth century omnibus scientific societies were founded in Rome and Florence. The Royal Society of London (founded 1660) and the Academy of Sciences in Paris (founded 1666) were highly influential. Specialized learned societies came into existence only at the end of the period. Instruments were less important than in physical science, but the microscope proved crucial to advances in knowledge. Much inquiry was tied to the pursuit of fine and technical arts (painting and sculpture, optics, printing and illustrating) and to collecting practices ("cabinets of curiosities"). Public gardens and zoological collections were essential to naturalists from the seventeenth century forward.

Natural Philosophy

At the beginning of the period the natural philosophy taught in the universities was dominated by Aristotelianism as recast by the late Scholastics to harmonize with Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Aristotelian philosophy established the linguistic and conceptual framework for inquiry and conveyed specific doctrines such as the "great chain of being," a posited hierarchy of natural forms ranging from the simplest to the most complex. Aside from Aristotelian influence, medicine was dependent on the legacy of the Greek physician Hippocrates (460c. 370 B.C.E.), especially the doctrine of the humors, and of the Hellenistic surgeon and Roman court physician Galen (129/130199/200 C.E.), whose general teleology and specific teachings in anatomy and physiology undergirded universitybased medical training. Competing intellectual traditions derived from Plato (427348/347 B.C.E.) as well as the occult sciences of the cabala, natural magic, hermeticism, astrology, and alchemy.

The greatest master of the occult sciences in medicine was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (14931541). Paracelsus rejected the study of anatomy, basing pathology and therapeutics instead on the doctrine of correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm. His "ontological" theory of disease, which held that the "seeds" of all maladies are present in every organism, undermined humor theory and encouraged the search for specific remedies, especially new ones derived from metals. Paracelsianism spread most rapidly in Protestant lands and Protestant enclaves in Catholic Europe. Its diffusion contributed to the decline of Aristotelianism, which was, however, principally undermined by the emergent "mechanical philosophy." Mechanism, which viewed living bodies as sophisticated machines, was dominant from the later seventeenth century until challenged around 1750 by vitalists who posited a distinctive "principle of life" or individuated vital "forces." By the eighteenth century many investigators rejected all "systems" and embraced a scientific ethos based on observation and experimentation.

Historical Context

European contact with the New World resulted in a challenge to existing conceptions of creation, the lineage of humankind, and the number and types of living creatures. Other influences included the continuing recovery of the heritage of Greco-Roman antiquity; the emergence of centralizing "new monarchies" and elaborated forms of princely and municipal government; and long-term economic revival from the ravages of the pandemic of plague that first struck Europe in 1348. In connection with these changes, new and fuller editions of the works of ancient philosophers and physicians appeared; the arts and sciences enjoyed expanded prestige and public patronage; and new commodities, both natural and manufactured, came into use. The Protestant Reformation destroyed the religious unity of Europe and encouraged challenges to tradition. The absolutist state emergent in the seventeenth century established new guardians of orthodoxy but also provided new resources for learned inquiry. More powerful government, coupled with economic growth and differentiation, encouraged the spread of literacy and the extension of modes of communication and transportation. These combined forces unsettled social hierarchies based on bloodlines, corporate status, and gender. The self-styled "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century was marked by a commitment to the methods and values of "science," variously defined, and by a heightened critical spirit. Broader historical developments were linked both as cause and effect to changes in the world of learning that, by the period's end, encouraged the emergence of modern life science.

Anatomy and Physiology

Because in Aristotelian-Galenic medicine the heart was considered central, many Renaissance-era inquirers were drawn to the study of this organ. Aristotle viewed the heart as the center of the body, the seat of the "vital heat" that empowered its functions. Galen delineated the structure and functions of the heart and other organs dominant in three body "centers" of head, chest, and abdomen. In his system, blood flowed only as part of an ebb and flow to and from the dominant organ to peripheral structures; arterial blood produced in the right ventricle of the heart seeped into the left ventricle via "pores" in the septum. In his anatomical atlas De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the anatomist and professor at Padua Andreas Vesalius (15141564) questioned the existence of the septal pores without challenging the overall outlines of Galenic physiology. After Vesalius, other investigators at Padua contributed to the study of the heart. Realdo Colombo (15101559) described the "lesser circulation" (the transit of blood from the right to the left side of the heart via the lungs), and Girolamo Fabrici (15331619) described the valves in the veins. The Padua tradition was crowned by the achievement of William Harvey (15781657), who studied with Fabrici. After taking his medical degree in 1602, Harvey returned to England, where he became a staff physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Fellow of the College of Physicians, and court physician to the Stuart kings.

A committed Aristotelian, Harvey upheld Aristotle's conception of the heart as the vivifying center of the body and the principle of the perfection of the circle. Yet Harvey was also a powerful innovator methodologically and conceptually. He designed and performed experiments using a wide range of cold- and warm-blooded animals. He drew compelling analogies between the work of the heart and vessels and mechanical actions. Most tellingly, he quantified the amount of blood that passed through the body with each beat of the heart. Judging it too great to be produced by nutritional activity, he was convinced that the blood must move in one great circulatory motion throughout the body. This discovery was incorporated in his Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood (1628). Although the impact of Harvey's work was delayed because of an entrenched Galenism, in time his findings revolutionized thinking about the heart and blood as well as general physiology. Harvey's work also lent great prestige to the emergent "mechanical philosophy," although Harvey himself was not a mechanist.

The chief intellectual force behind the body-machine analogy was the French philosopher Ren Descartes (15961650). Descartes's cosmology sought to explain all known physical phenomena, including, in his posthumously published treatise Man (1664), mechanisms of digestion, respiration, reproduction, and other vital activities. Fruitful applications of mechanist thinking were found in works such as Giovanni Alfonso Borelli's On the Motions of Animals (16801681), which explored the mechanics of the human muscular and skeletal systems. Mechanist thinking also had a profound impact on inquiry into the cluster of problems called "generation."

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biology: Definition from Answers.com - Answers - The Most ...