Abstract
This work presents a panoramic view of the history of biological sciences from the earliest times until 1950 and their connection with the changing political and conceptual landscape. The author also emphasises the concept of paradigm in science and its shifts linked to sociomorphic modelling, i.e., the unconscious adaptation of biological doctrines to social structures and their functioning, which contemporary biology reaffirms and supports by claiming that 'in nature, it works just the same'.
The book investigates the biological knowledge of hunter-gatherer societies and early agriculturalists, ancient non-European civilisations, Greek and Roman antiquity, medieval biology of the European West as well as the Byzantine and Arabic East, and all the way to biology of the Renaissance, Baroque, and the Enlightenment, especially the Cartesian and Linnaean revolution. For the period of 1750-1950, the publication treats separately the distinct traditions of biology in France (Lamarckism, catastrophism, comparative morphology), Great Britain (natural theology, Darwinism), and Germany (Naturphilosophie, embryology, and autonomism).
The origins and early development of microbiology, genetics, ethology, ecology, and protection of nature are described in separate sections.