The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

The beauty of living things arises from their endless variety, the sense that they give of unity within diversity, and the intricacy of their relations. In the face of nature’s munificence it’s all too easy to surrender to an inarticulate sense of the numinous connectedness of things, or else let it all surge by in a kaleidoscopic blur. Haeckel looked down upon the coral gardens of Al-Tur and babbled of the Magical Hesperides; Darwin entered the Mata Atlântica at Rio and discovered devotion – faced with a rainforest, anyone can go weak at the knees. If, however, we wish to understand the natural world, we must focus on, isolate and name its components. We must dissect, parse and label. But, as the Bird Hall shows, there are many ways to carve reality, and each cut reveals a different facet. The question that confronts us, then, is this: where did Aristotle make his cuts? What sort of science did he invent?