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Aristotle's biology — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-06T14:36:59.967Z
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Aristotle's biology — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_de2e8908f72d (Metraipolis archive dc_de2e8908f72d, sha256 0af3cae075e471dd1858fe5c9f16d26a9e9cc05dce2bc5d91b21907c94c78a48)

BibTeX

@misc{dcde2e8908f72d,
  title = {Aristotle's biology — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_de2e8908f72d; sha256 0af3cae075e471dd1858fe5c9f16d26a9e9cc05dce2bc5d91b21907c94c78a48},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Aristotle's biology is the theory of biology, grounded in systematic observation and collection of data, mainly zoological, embodied in Aristotle's books on the science. Many of his observations were made during his stay on the island of Lesbos, including especially his descriptions of the marine biology of the Pyrrha lagoon, now the Gulf of Kalloni. His theory is based on his concept of form, which derives from but is markedly unlike Plato's theory of Forms. The theory describes five major biological processes, namely metabolism, temperature regulation, information processing, embryogenesis, and inheritance. Each was defined in detail, in some cases enough allowing modern biologists to construct mathematical models of the mechanisms described. Aristotle's method, too, resembled the style of science used by modern biologists when exploring a new area, with systematic data collection, discovery of patterns, and inference of possible causal explanations from these. He did not perform experiments in the modern sense, but made observations of living animals and carried out dissections. He names some 500 species of bird, mammal, and fish; and he distinguishes dozens of insects and other invertebrates. He describes the internal anatomy of over a hundred animals, and dissected around 35 of these. Aristotle's writings on biology, the first in the history of science, are scattered across several books, forming about a quarter of his writings that have survived. The main biology texts were the History of Animals, Generation of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Parts of Animals, and On the Soul, as well as the lost drawings of The Anatomies which accompanied the History. Apart from his pupil, Theophrastus, who wrote a matching Enquiry into Plants, no research of comparable scope was carried out in ancient Greece, though Hellenistic medicine in Egypt continued Aristotle's inquiry into the mechanisms of the human body. Aristotle's biology was influential in the medieval Islamic world. Translation of Arabic versions and commentaries into Latin brought knowledge of Aristotle back into Western Europe, but the only biological work widely taught in medieval universities was On the Soul. The association of his work with medieval scholasticism, as well as errors in his theories, caused Early Modern scientists such as Galileo and William Harvey to reject Aristotle. Criticism of his errors and secondhand reports continued for centuries. He has found better acceptance among zoologists, and some of his long-derided observations in marine biology have been found in modern times to be true.

Tema degli esploratori: storia e filosofia della scienza (deposito sistematico; ricerca «scientific method»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Aristotle's biology» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology
Wikidata Q27997172: «theory of biology, grounded in systematic observation and collection of data, mainly zoological, embodied in Aristotle's books on the science» (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27997172
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_biology?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1372255025, consultata il 2026-10-06T12:55:47.659Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: ae3313493797af34e717a6fbcdabb4e2aa6e677d715c8f203b121b5bbb0b8653