- During the Renaissance, the sciences flourished. Biology did not, however, develop quite so rapidly as physics did. The reasons for this are that the object studied by the biologist is much more complex, and also that mathematics, a powerful tool for the physicist, is of relatively little use in biology. Moreover, it was oftentimes knowledge of physics that was behind the development of biological instruments such as the microscope. Indirectly, however, physics also had a negative impact on the development of biology. Thinkers such as René Descartes promoted the notion that organisms were merely machines, the study of which was to be reduced to physics. This retarded the development of an autonomous method in biology for quite some time, and limited the study of psychology to human beings.
- The restlessness, probing curiosity, and many-sided learning of the Renaissance are epitomized in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Known primarily as an artist, he was also a talented engineer, inventor, observer of nature, and anatomist. Had his notes and drawings in human anatomy been published when made, anatomy might have been advanced by a century. He made scientific studies of the action of the eye, the mechanisms of various joints, and of the flight of birds. Embryological and comparative anatomical studies alike came within the compass of his work.
- Biology in the 16th century is represented in the herbals, encyclopedias of nature, and monographs of the period. The German fathers of botany produced herbals that ranged from annotated texts of Dioscorides, like that of Otto Brunfels (1489–1534), to the beautifully illustrated manual of Leonhard Fuchs (1501–66), which was intended as a guide for the collection of medicinal plants in Western Europe. The encyclopedias attempted to gather together in one work all of the available knowledge about living things. The most influential of these was the History of Animals by Konrad Gesner (1516–65) of Switzerland, probably the most learned zoologist of the period. Some of Gesner’s less ambitious contemporaries confined their efforts to treatises or monographs on special groups of organisms.
- Human anatomy in the Renaissance was studied through a slavish interpretation of Galen by the teacher, while an attending barber’s assistant crudely made the actual dissections. By his own skilled and careful dissections, however, Andreas Vesalius (1514–64) of Belgium showed his anatomy students at Padua that Galen, great as he was, could be wrong. In 1543 he published his wonderfully illustrated book, On the Structure of the Human Body, which marked the end of the servile adherence to the authority of the past.
- Until the functioning of the heart and blood was understood it was impossible to grasp the natural ordering of the bodies of the higher animals. The publication in 1628 of William Harvey’s (1578–1657) treatise On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals was a large step forward in understanding anatomy. Numerous observations, carefully planned and executed experiments, and quantitative calculations led Harvey inductively to the conclusion that the heart is a muscular pump that propels the blood in a closed circuit throughout the vertebrate body. John Ray (1627–1705) is noted for his work in taxonomy. Ray sought to establish a system of classification of both plants and animals in which species sharing characteristics are shown to be related by their classification and nomenclature. Ray made careful studies of comparative anatomy, and used them as basis for his animal taxonomy. His work represents a huge step forward from the previous alphabetical lists of species, and it provided direction to later taxonomists such as Carolus Linnaeus.
- In the 17th century the compound microscope was added to the apparatus of the biologist. As used by such men as Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) in England and Marcello Malpighi (1628–94) in Italy to study the fine structure of living things, it led to the development of a new branch of biology called histology. The world of microbes was first seen by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) through his homemade lenses, and microbiology was born. The microscope allowed biologists to observe entities that previously were only hypothetical, e.g., disease agents such as bacteria
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