The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

Where does Aristotle’s exotic zoology come from? He was hardly ever out of sight of the Aegean Sea, so he could not have collected it himself. The Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder gave an answer. As so often with Pliny’s assertions, it has a fantastical air. He said that Alexander the Great supplied it. King Alexander the Great, inflamed with a desire for discovering the natures of animals, entrusted this task to Aristotle, a man outstanding in every department of knowledge. Several thousand men in the whole region of Asia and Greece were put under his command – all those who made their living from hunting, bird catching and fishing as well as those who had in their care animal collections, herds of cattle, beehives, fish-ponds, aviaries. The idea was that nothing anywhere in the world might be overlooked by him. It was as a result of his thorough questioning of these men that he composed some fifty famous and distinguished volumes about animals.