Arab domination of biology

During the almost 1,000 years that science was dormant in Europe, the Arabs, who by the 9th century had extended
their sphere of influence as far as Spain, became the custodians of science and dominated biology, as they did
other disciplines. At the same time, as the result of a revival of learning in China, new technical inventions flowed
from there to the West. The Chinese had discovered how to make paper and how to print from movable type, two
achievements that were to have an inestimable effect upon learning. Another important advance that also occurred
during that time was the introduction of the so-called Arabic numerals into Europe from India.

From the 3rd until the 11th century, biology was essentially an Arab science. Although the Arabic scholars
themselves were not great innovators, they discovered the works of such men as Aristotle and Galen, translated
those works into Arabic, studied them, and wrote commentaries about them. Of the Arab biologists, al-Jāḥiẓ, who
died about 868, is particularly noteworthy. Among his biological writings is Kitāb al-ḥayawān (“Book of Animals”),
which, although revealing some Greek influence, is primarily an Arabic work. In it the author emphasized the unity
of nature and recognized relationships between different groups of organisms. Because al-Jāḥiẓ believed that earth
contained both male and female elements, he found the Greek doctrine of spontaneous generation (life emerging
from mud) to be quite reasonable.

Muslim physician Avicenna was an outstanding scientist who lived during the late 10th and early 11th centuries; he
was the true successor to Aristotle. His writings on medicine and drugs, which were particularly authoritative and
remained so until the Renaissance, did much to take the works of Aristotle back to Europe, where they were
translated into Latin from Arabic.
Development of botany and zoology

Saint Albertus Magnus

During the 12th century the growth of biology was sporadic. Nevertheless, it was during that time that botany was
developed from the study of plants with healing properties; similarly, from veterinary medicine and the pleasures of
the hunt came zoology. Because of the interest in medicinal plants, herbs in general began to be described and
illustrated in a realistic manner. Although Arabic science was well developed during the period and was far in
advance of Latin, Byzantine, and Chinese cultures, it began to show signs of decline. Latin learning, on the other
hand, rapidly increasing, was best exemplified perhaps by the mid-13th-century German scholar Albertus
Magnus (Saint Albert the Great), who was probably the greatest naturalist of the Middle Ages. His biological
writings (De vegetabilibus, seven books, and De animalibus, 26 books) were based on the classical Greek
authorities, predominantly Aristotle. But in spite of that classical basis, a significant amount of his work contained
new observations and facts; for example, he described with great accuracy the leaf anatomy and venation of the
plants he studied.

Albertus was particularly interested in plant propagation and reproduction and discussed in some detail the
sexuality of plants and animals. Like his Greek predecessors, he believed in spontaneous generation; he also
believed that animals were more perfect than plants, because they required two individuals for the sexual act.
Perhaps one of Albertus’s greatest contributions to medieval biology was the denial of many superstitions believed
by his contemporaries, a skepticism that, together with the reintroduction of Aristotelian biology, was to have
profound effects on subsequent European science.

One of Albertus’s pupils was Thomas Aquinas, who, like his mentor, endeavoured to reconcile Aristotelian
philosophy and the teachings of the church. Because Aquinas was a rationalist, he declared that God created the
reasoning mind; hence, by true intellectual processes of reasoning, man could not arrive at a conclusion that was in
opposition to Christian thought. Acceptance of this philosophy made possible a revival of rational learning that was
consistent with Christian belief.
Revitalization of anatomy
Italy, during the Middle Ages, became the most-active scientific centre, although its major interests were
concentrated on agriculture and medicine. A development of particular significance at that time was the
introduction of dissection into medical schools, a step that revitalized the study of anatomy. Because of what it
reveals about medieval anatomy in general, the work of Mondino de’ Luzzi, the most famous of the Italian
anatomists at the beginning of the 14th century, is particularly important. It is thought that early in his career,
contrary to the trend at the time, in which the teacher left the actual dissection to an underling, Mondino
performed many dissections himself. Later, however, it is likely that he increasingly left the work to his assistants.
Mondino adhered closely to the works of the Greeks and Arabs, and he thus repeated their errors.
The Renaissance
Resurgence of biology
Beginning in Italy during the 14th century, there was a general ferment within the culture itself, which, together
with the rebirth of learning (partly as a result of the rediscovery of Greek work), is referred to as the Renaissance.
Interestingly, it was the artists, rather than the professional anatomists, who were intent upon a true rendering of
the bodies of animals, including humans, and thus were motivated to gain their knowledge firsthand by dissection.
No individual better exemplifies the Renaissance than Leonardo da Vinci, whose anatomical studies of the human
form during the late 1400s and early 1500s were so far in advance of the age that they included details not
recognized until a century later. Furthermore, while dissecting animals and examining their structure, Leonardo
compared them with the structure of humans. In doing so he was the first to indicate the homology between the
arrangements of bones and joints in the leg of the human and that of the horse, despite the superficial differences.
Homology was to become an important concept in uniting outwardly diverse groups of animals into distinct units, a
factor that is of great significance in the study of evolution.

Other factors had a profound effect upon the course of biology in the 1500s, particularly the introduction
of printing around the middle of the century, the increasing availability of paper, and the perfected art of the wood
engraver, all of which meant that illustrations as well as letters could be transferred to paper. In addition, after the
Turks conquered Byzantium in 1453, many Greek scholars took refuge in the West; the scholars of the West thus
had direct access to the scientific works of antiquity rather than indirect access through Arabic translations.
Advances in botany
Over the period 1530–40, German theologian and botanist Otto Brunfels published the two volumes of
his Herbarum vivae eicones, a book about plants, which, with its fresh and vigorous illustrations, contrasted
sharply with earlier texts, whose authors had been content merely to copy from old manuscripts. In addition to
books on the same subject, Hieronymus Bock (Latinized to Tragus) and Leonhard Fuchs also published about the
mid-1500s descriptive well-illustrated texts about common wild flowers. The books published by the three men,
who are often referred to as the German fathers of botany, may be considered the forerunners of modern botanical
floras (treatises on or lists of the plants of an area or period).