View source for Template:History of biology

[[Image:Erasmus Darwin Temple of Nature.jpg|thumb|right|320px|The frontispiece to [[Erasmus Darwin]]'s evolution-themed poem ''The Temple of Nature'' shows a goddess pulling back the veil from nature (in the person of [[Artemis]]). Allegory and metaphor have often played an important role in the history of biology.]]

The '''history of biology''' traces the study of the [[life|living world]] from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of ''[[biology]]'' as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from [[history of medicine|traditions of medicine]] and [[natural history]] reaching back to [[Galen]] and [[Aristotle]] in ancient Greece. During the Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized by a renewed interest in [[empiricism]] and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were [[Vesalius]] and [[William Harvey|Harvey]], who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as [[Carolus Linnaeus|Linnaeus]] and [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon|Buffon]] who began to [[Scientific classification|classify the diversity of life]] and the [[fossil record]], as well as the development and behavior of organisms. [[Microscopy]] revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for [[cell theory]]. The growing importance of [[natural theology]], partly a response to the rise of [[mechanical philosophy]], encouraged the growth of natural history (although it entrenched the [[argument from design]]).

Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as [[botany]] and [[zoology]] became increasingly professional [[scientific discipline]]s. [[Lavoisier]] and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as [[Alexander von Humboldt]] investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography&mdash;laying the foundations for [[biogeography]], [[ecology]] and [[ethology]]. Naturalists began to reject [[essentialism]] and consider the importance of [[extinction]] and the [[history of evolutionary thought|mutability of species]]. [[Cell theory]] provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from [[embryology]] and [[paleontology]], were synthesized in {{aps|Charles Darwin}}s theory of [[evolution]] by [[natural selection]]. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of [[spontaneous generation]] and the rise of the [[germ theory of disease]], though the mechanism of [[biological inheritance|inheritance]] remained a mystery.

In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of [[Gregor Mendel|Mendel's]] work led to the rapid development of [[genetics]] by [[Thomas Hunt Morgan]] and his students, and by the 1930s the combination of [[population genetics]] and natural selection in the "[[Modern evolutionary synthesis|neo-Darwinian synthesis]]". New disciplines developed rapidly, especially after [[James D. Watson|Watson]] and [[Francis Crick|Crick]] proposed the structure of [[DNA]]. Following the establishment of the [[Central Dogma]] and the cracking of the [[genetic code]], biology was largely split between ''organismal biology''&mdash;the fields that deal with whole organisms and groups of organisms&mdash;and the fields related to ''[[cell biology|cellular]] and [[molecular biology]]''. By the late 20th century, new fields like [[genomics]] and [[proteomics]] were reversing this trend, with organismal biologists using molecular techniques, and molecular and cell biologists investigating the interplay between genes and the environment, as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.

{{histOfScience}}