Aristotle and Modern Biology

Abstract

Science had its origin, if not in opposition to Aristotle, at least in opposition to Aristotelianism. But science in its most authoritative form was what came to be called physics, not biology. Faced with the recent crisis in biology, in which the life sciences have been threatened with reduction to microversions of themselves and ultimately to chemistry and physics, one wonders if the besieged biologists, or at any rate their philosophical defenders, might not after all learn something to their advantage by reflecting on the one great philosopher who was also a great biologist. And we can learn from Aristotle; not, however, in a simple or straightforward fashion. There is no use just contrasting, as some have been tempted to do, Democritean with Aristotelian science and putting physicists in the former class, biologists in the latter. Even if we reject Simpson’s alleged reaffirmation of Roger Bacon and stoutly deny that ‘the study of Aristotle increases ignorance’,¹ we must nevertheless admit that in some important respects biology, like all modern science, really is, and must be, un-Aristotelian. This thesis could be defended in a number of ways; let me select four.²