- Biology is the experimental science that studies living things and their vital activities. It takes its origin from the natural human desire to know what living things are and what they do, but also, and more generally, from a practical interest in acquiring food, clothing, shelter, and protection, and in curing sickness. People sometimes tried to obtain these things, and especially cures, by supplicating the gods and having recourse to magic. People often also used a pragmatic approach, however, to determine things such as what foods were edible and where game was most likely to be found. In this way empirical knowledge about diet, medicinal herbs, and the raising of crops and animals gradually accumulated. Around the 7th century b.c. a new mentality manifested itself among the Greeks. The Greek quest for knowledge was motivated by wonder, a desire to know the causes of things, a desire satisfied only though observation and logical reasoning. The spirit and achievement of such research were embodied in the works of the father of medicine, hippocra tes (fl. 400 b.c.). Most of the 60 or 70 separate treatises attributed to him were written over a period of several centuries. In these treatises are found not only remedies for different illnesses that are the fruits of empirical observation, but also an attempt to understand what the causes of illnesses are, and why the remedies work. The attempts at causal explanation were often far from the mark, but still represent a step beyond pragmatic generalizations.
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