ABSTRACT
The earliest activities of Renaissance research in the biological field were, in accordance with the general tendency of that period, purely philological. New editions of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, and other natural philosophers of antiquity were published, their language commented upon, and attempts made to explain their contents. However, the actual historical course of events compelled the learned world to carry out independent work in regard to natural objects as well. Even the fauna and flora of central Europe were very imperfectly known to the ancient philosophers, and the information regarding many of them needed supplementing with innumerable facts, which entailed much independent research work. And this became all the more necessary when the great geographical discoveries acquainted mankind with the perfectly new and exceptionally rich nature of the tropics. All these circumstances combined to produce an abundant literature of a purely descriptive kind, both zoological and botanical, which, thanks to the art of book-printing, received such widespread publication as the biological works of antiquity could never hope for. Further, the methods of reproducing pictures, discovered in connexion with book-printing —woodcuts and copperplate engraving — now for the first time made it possible to utilize the illustration in the service of scientific literature — a means of extending human knowledge the importance of which can be appreciated only if we consider what it means in our own day and what would be the consequence if modern science were to be deprived of it. A review of some of the more eminent representatives of this branch of biological science during the Renaissance will give us some idea of the objects they aimed at and the respects in which they advanced this science. For this purpose we shall for the moment discuss only the results of zoological research during this period; the botanical results may perhaps more suitably be left to a subsequent chapter dealing with the history of biological classification.
