Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) first attempted a comprehensive classification of animals. His organization and rational development of thought sought to include all things and established an area of natural philosophy that included living things. He was the first to establish some type of hierarchy of animals based on the logic of structure. Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79) wrote a major work on natural history. Galen, Greek Galenos, Latin Galenus, (born 129 CE, Pergamum, Mysia, Anatolia [now Bergama, Turkey]—died c. 216), Greek physician, writer, and philosopher who exercised a dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century. Galen regarded anatomy as the foundation of medical knowledge, and he frequently dissected and experimented on monkeys), pigs, sheep, and goats.

In the twelfth century, the idea emerged that medical practice should be made a division of the "natural" part of philosophy, as Aristotle had done. By the mid-thirteenth century natural philosophy was one of the liberal arts that all scholars were required to study, and medicine was a part of this. In Italy major universities began to find in the ideas of Galen and Aristotle an encouragement to investigate. Much of the early information about human anatomy came from the dissection and study of animals, although some efforts were made to understand and classify animals. It was during the Renaissance that the study of zoology began to separate from human anatomy, as great artists who sought to understand the makeup of both men and animals emerged. Konrad Gesner (1516-1565), recognized as the father of zoology, developed the field as a scientific inquiry. Other investigators, such as Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), contributed accurate observations of animals. Natural philosopher and theologian John Ray (1627-1705) also sought to understand and classify all known animals.

The same driving forces that were part of the discovery period were present in many areas. Explorations of the New World by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Cabots, and others told of new and unusual plants and animals. In 1453 Byzantium, or Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Christendom, fell to the Turks, forcing Greek scholars to move from the East to the West, bringing with them knowledge and access to ancient works. The explosion in the liberal arts with the discovery of Greek manuscripts brought new interest in all areas of classical thinking. Most important of all was the invention of the printing press with movable type by Johann Gutenberg (1398?-1468) around 1455. This enabled scholars to write about their findings and ideas, and using woodcut drawings, they could illustrate what they saw. Add the new availability of paper and the beginning of writing in the language of the people, and the interest in learning would spread rapidly.

New fields of science don’t emerge in a flash, and evolutionary psychology—sometimes called modern Darwinism—is no exception. But over the past several years, evolutionary psychology as a discipline has gathered both momentum and respect. A convergence of research and discoveries in genetics, neuropsychology, and paleobiology, among other sciences, evolutionary psychology holds that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Homo sapiens emerged on the Savannah Plain some 200,000 years ago, yet according to evolutionary psychology, people today still seek those traits that made survival possible then: an instinct to fight furiously when threatened, for instance, and a drive to trade information and share secrets. Human beings are, in other words, hardwired. You can take the person out of the Stone Age, evolutionary psychologists contend, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person.

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Note on Histories of animals, created by One Corixus on 13/04/2021.