On this page we are going to try to outline the history of biology. The word biology is said to have been used relatively ‘young’: it is said to have been used for the first time in 1800 by a German physiologist and anatomist, Karl Friedrich Burdach (1), and in 1802 by physician and scientist Gottfried Treviranus and – simultaneously the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck in his work Hydrogéology. The science of biology stems from the much older medicine and ‘natural history’ dating back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (4th century BC) and the Roman physician Galen (3rd century BC) and was further developed in the Middle Ages, modern times to the present day, in the ‘post-modern era’.
To be continued..
Footnotes:
- German Wikipedia: Thomas Junker: Geschichte der Biologie. Beck, Munich 2004, S. 8.
- Wikipedia: History of biology.
