The Ionian philosophers ignored the supernatural and supposed, instead, that the affairs of the universe followed a fixed and unalterable pattern. They assumed the existence of causality; that is, that every event had a cause, and that a particular cause inevitably produced a particular effect, with no danger of change by a capricious will. A further assumption was that the 'natural law' that governed the universe was of such a kind that the mind of man could encompass it and could deduce it from first principles or from observation.

This point of view dignified the study of the universe. It maintained that man could understand the universe, and gave the assurance that the understanding, once gained, would be permanent. If one could work out a knowledge of the laws governing the motion of the sun, for instance, one would not need to fear that the knowledge would suddenly become useless, when some Phaethon decided to seize the reins of the sun chariot and lead it across the sky along an arbitrary course.

Little is known of these early Ionian philosophers; their works are lost. But their names survive, and the central core of their teachings as well. Moreover, the philosophy of rationalism (the belief that the workings of the universe could be understood through reason rather than revelation), which began with them, has never died. It had a stormy youth and flickered nearly to extinction after the fall of the Roman Empire, but it never quite died.

Rationalism entered biology when the mechanisms of the animal body came to be studied for their own sake, rather than as transmitting devices for divine messages. By tradition, the first man to dissect animals merely to describe what he saw, was Alcmaeon (flourished, sixth century B.C.). About 500 B.C., Alcmaeon described the nerves of the eye and studied the structure of the growing chick within the egg. He might thus be considered the first student of anatomy (the study of the structure of living organisms) and of embryology (the study of the development of organisms). Alcmaeon even described the narrow tube that connects the middle ear with the throat. This was lost sight of by later anatomists, and was only rediscovered two thousand years later.

The most important name to be associated with the rationalistic beginnings of biology, however, is that of Hippocrates (460?~377? B.C.). Virtually nothing is known about the man himself, except that he was born and lived on the island of Cos, just off the Ionian coast. On Cos was a temple to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. The temple was the nearest equivalent to today's medical school, and to be accepted as a priest there was the equivalent of obtaining a modern medical degree.

Hippocrates' great service to biology was that of reducing Asclepius to a purely honorary position. No god influenced medicine in the Hippocratic view. To Hippocrates, the healthy body was one in which the component parts worked well and harmoniously, whereas a diseased body was one in which they did not. It was the task of the physician to observe closely in order to see where the flaws in the working were, and then to take the proper action to correct those flaws. The proper action did not consist of prayer or sacrifice, of driving out demons or of propitiating gods. It consisted chiefly of allowing the patient to rest, seeing that he was kept clean, had fresh air, and simple wholesome food. Any form of excess was bound to overbalance the body's workings in one respect or another, so there was to be moderation in all things.

In short, the physician's role, in the Hippocratic view, was to let natural law itself effect the cure. The body had self- corrective devices, which should be given every opportunity to work. In view of the limited knowledge of medicine, this was an excellent point of view.

Hippocrates founded a medical tradition that persisted for centuries after his time. The physicians of this tradition placed his honoured name on their writings so that it is impossible to tell which of the books are actually those of Hippocrates himself. The 'Hippocratic oath,' for instance, which is still recited by medical graduates at the moment of receiving their degrees, was most certainly not written by him, and was, in fact, probably not composed until some six centuries after his time. On the other hand, one of the oldest of the Hippocratic writings deals with the disease epilepsy, and this may very well have been written by Hippocrates himself. If so, it is an excellent example of the arrival of rationalism in biology.

Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain function (still not entirely understood) in which the brain's normal control over the body is disrupted. In milder forms, the victim may misinterpret sense impressions, and therefore suffer hallucinations. In the more spectacular forms, the muscles go out of control suddenly; the epileptic falls to the ground and cries out, jerking spasmodically and sometimes doing severe damage to himself.

The epileptic fit does not last long, but it is a fearful sight to behold. Onlookers who do not understand the intricacies of the nervous system, find it all too easy to believe that if a person moves not of his own volition, and in such a way as to harm himself, it must be because some supernatural power has seized control of his body. The epileptic is 'possessed'; and the disease is the 'sacred disease' because supernatural beings are involved.

In the book ‘On the Sacred Disease’, written about 400 B.C., possibly by Hippocrates himself, this view is strongly countered. Hippocrates maintained that it was useless, generally, to attribute divine causes to diseases, and that there was no reason to consider epilepsy an exception. Epilepsy, like all other diseases, had a natural cause and a rational treatment. If the cause was not known and the treatment uncertain, that did not change the principle.

All of modern science cannot improve on this view, and if one were to insist on seeking for one date, one man, and one book as the beginning of the science of biology, one could do worse than point to the date 400 B.C., the man Hippocrates, and the book ‘On the Sacred Disease’.

Athenian ideas about nature

Biology and, indeed, ancient science in general, reached a kind of climax in Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). He was a native of northern Greece, and a teacher of Alexander the Great in the latter's youth. Aristotle's great days, however, came in his middle years, when he founded and taught at the famous Lyceum in Athens. Aristotle was the most versatile and thorough of the Greek philosophers. He wrote on almost all subjects, from physics to literature, from politics to biology. In later times, his writings on physics, dealing mainly with the structure and workings of the inanimate universe, were most famous; yet these, as events proved, were almost entirely wrong.

On the other hand, it was biology and, particularly, the study of sea creatures, that was his first intellectual love. Moreover, it was Aristotle's biological books that proved the best of his scientific writings, and yet they were, in later times, the least regarded.

Aristotle carefully and accurately noted the appearance and habits of creatures (this being the study of natural history). In the process, he listed about five hundred kinds or 'species' of animals, and differentiated between them. The list in itself would be trivial, but Aristotle went further. He recognised that different animals could be grouped into categories, and that the grouping was not necessarily done simply and easily. For instance, it is easy to divide land animals into four-footed creatures (beasts), flying, feathered creatures (birds), and a remaining miscellany ('vermin,' from the Latin word vermis for 'worms'). Sea creatures might be all lumped under the heading of 'fish.' Having done so, however, it is not always easy to tell under which category a particular creature might fit.

Aristotle's careful observations of the dolphin, for instance, made it quite plain that although it was a fishlike creature in superficial appearance and in habitat, it was quite unfishlike in many important respects. The dolphin had lungs and breathed air; unlike fish, it would drown if kept submerged. The dolphin was warm-blooded, not cold-blooded as ordinary fish were. Most important it gave birth to living young, which were nourished before birth by a placenta. In all these respects, the dolphin was similar to hairy warm- blooded animals of the land. These similarities, it seemed to Aristotle, were sufficient to make it necessary to group the cetaceans (the whales, dolphins, and porpoises) with the beasts of the field, rather than with the fish of the sea. In this, Aristotle was two thousand years ahead of his time, for cetaceans continued to be grouped with fish throughout ancient and medieval times. Aristotle was quite modern, again, in his division of the scaly fish into two groups, those with bony skeletons, and those (like the sharks) with cartilaginous skeletons. This again fits the modern view.

In grouping his animals, and in comparing them with the rest of the universe, Aristotle's neat mind could not resist arranging matters in order of increasing complexity. He saw nature progressing through gradual stages to man, who stands (as it is natural for man to think) at the peak of creation. Thus, one might divide the universe into four kingdoms: the inanimate world of the soil, sea, and air; the world of the plants above that; the world of the animals higher still; and the world of man at the peak. The inanimate world exists; the plant world not only exists, it reproduces, too; the animal world not only exists and reproduces, it moves, too; and man not only exists, reproduces, and moves, but he can reason, too.

Furthermore, within each world there are further subdivisions. Plants can be divided into the simpler and the more complex. Animals can be divided into those without red blood and those with red blood. The animals without red blood include, in ascending order of complexity, sponges, molluscs, insects, crustaceans, and octopi (according to Aristotle). The animals with red blood are higher on the scale and include fish, reptiles, birds, and beasts.

Aristotle recognised that in this ladder of life there were no sharp boundaries, and that it was impossible to tell exactly into which group each individual species might fall. Thus very simple plants might scarcely seem to possess any attribute of life. Very simple animals (sponges, for instance) were plantlike, and so on.

Aristotle nowhere showed any traces of belief that one form of life might slowly be converted into another; that a creature high on the ladder might be descended from one lower on the ladder. It is this concept, which is the key to modern theories of evolution and Aristotle was not an evolutionist. However, the preparation of a ladder of life inevitably set up a train of thought that was bound, eventually, to lead to the evolutionary concept.

Aristotle is the founder of zoology (the study of animals), but as nearly as we can tell from his surviving writings, he rather neglected plants. However, after Aristotle's death, the leadership of his school passed on to his student, Theophrastus (380?-287? B.C.), who filled in this deficiency of his master. Theophrastus founded botany (the study of plants), and in his writings carefully described some five hundred species of plants.

Alexandrian ideas about nature

After the time of Alexander the Great and his conquest of the Persian Empire, Greek culture spread rapidly across the Mediterranean world. Egypt fell under the rule of the Ptolemies (descendants of one of the generals of Alexander) and Greeks flocked into the newly founded capital city of Alexandria. There the first Ptolemies founded and maintained the Museum, which was the nearest ancient equivalent to a modern university. Alexandrian scholars are famous for their researches into mathematics, astronomy, geography, and physics. Less important is Alexandrian biology, yet at least two names of the first rank are to be found there. These are Herophilus (flourished c. 300 B.C.) and his pupil, Erasistratus (flourished c. 250 B.C.).

In Christian times, they were accused of having dissected the human body publicly as a method of teaching anatomy. It is probable they did not do so. Herophilus was the first to pay adequate attention to the brain, which he considered the seat of intelligence. Alcmaeon and Hippocrates had also believed this, but Aristotle had not. He had felt the brain to be no more than an organ designed to cool the blood. Herophilus was able to distinguish between sensory nerves (those which receive sensation) and motor nerves (those which induce muscular movement). He also distinguished between arteries and veins, noting that the former pulsated, and the latter did not. He described the liver and spleen, the retina of the eye, and the first section of the small intestine, which is now called the duodenum. He also described ovaries and related organs in the female, and the prostate gland in the male. Erasistratus added to the study of the brain, pointing out the division of the organ into the larger cerebrum and the smaller cerebellum. He particularly noted the wrinkled appearance (convolutions) of the brain, and saw that these were more pronounced in man than in other animals. He therefore connected the convolutions with intelligence.

After such a promising beginning, the Alexandrian school of biology declined. In fact, all Greek science began to petered out after about 200 B.C. It had flourished for four centuries, but by continuous warfare among themselves, the Greeks had recklessly expended their energies and prosperity. They fell first under Macedonian and then Roman dominion. More and more their scholarly interests turned toward the study of rhetoric, of ethics and of moral philosophy. They turned away from natural philosophy; from the rational study of nature that had begun with the Ionians.

Biology in particular, suffered, for life was naturally considered more sacred than the inanimate universe, and therefore less a proper subject for rationalistic study. Dissection of the human body seemed absolutely wrong to many, and it either did not take place at all or, if it did, it was soon stopped, first by public opinion, and then by law. In some cases, the objections to dissection lay in the religious belief (by the Egyptians, for instance) that the integrity of the physical body was required for the proper enjoyment of an afterlife. To others, such as the Jews and, later, the Christians, dissection was sacrilegious because the human body was created in the likeness of God, and was therefore Holy. It came about, therefore, that the centuries during which Rome dominated the Mediterranean world represented one long suspension of biological advance. Scholars seemed content to collect and preserve the discoveries of the past, and to popularize them for Roman audiences.

According to tradition, Taoism (pronounced Dowism) originated in ancient China with a man named Lao Tzu, said to have been born about 604 B.C. Some scholars date his life as much as three centuries later than this; some doubt that he ever lived. If he did, we know almost nothing about him. We don't even know his name, Lao Tzu, which can be translated "the Old Boy," "the Old Fellow," or "the Grand Old Master" being obviously a title of endearment and respect.

On opening Taoism's bible, the Tao Te Ching, we sense at once that everything revolves around the pivotal concept of Tao itself. Literally this word means "path" or "way." There are three senses, however, in which this "way" can be understood.

First, Tao is the way of ultimate reality. This Tao cannot be perceived for it exceeds the reach of the senses. If it were to reveal itself in all its sharpness, fullness, and glory, mortal man would not be able to bear the vision. Not only does it exceed the senses, however; it exceeds all thoughts and imaginings as well. Hence, words cannot describe nor define it. The Tao Te Ching opens by stating this point categorically: "The Tao which can be conceived is not the real Tao." Ineffable and transcendent, this ultimate Tao is the ground of all existence. It is behind all and beneath all, the womb from which all life springs and to which it again returns. Tao in the first and basic sense can be known, but only through mystical insight which cannot be translated into words, hence Taoism's teasing epigram, "Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know."

Though Tao ultimately is transcendent, it is also immanent. In this secondary sense it is the way of the universe; the norm, the rhythm, the driving power in all nature, the ordering principle behind all life. It is also likewise in the midst of life, for when Tao enters this second form it "assumes flesh" and informs all things. Basically, spirit rather than matter it cannot be exhausted; the more it is drawn upon the richer the fountain will gush. There are about it the marks of inevitability; when autumn comes "no leaf is spared because of its beauty, no flower because of its fragrance." Yet ultimately it is benign. Giving as it does without stint to nature and man, "it may be called the Mother of the World." As nature's agent, Tao bears a resemblance to Bergson's elan vital; as her orderer, it parallels to some extent the lex aeterna of the Classical West, the eternal law of nature in accord with which the universe operates. Darwin's colleague Roames, could have been speaking of it when he referred to "the integrating principle of the whole, the Spirit as it were, of the universe instinct with contrivance, which flows with purpose."

In a third sense Tao provides a rational view of nature. In particular Tao refers to the way man should order his life to the order of the universe, and Taoism suggests what this way of life should be. The power of Tao is the power that enters a life that has reflectively and intuitively coupled itself with the Way of the Universe. Taoism is more a perspective than an organised movement. As a point of view, philosophical Taoism has had a profound influence on sustaining Chinese life, and is beginning to influence ideas about sustainable development in the West.

The basic quality of life in tune with the universe is wu wet. This concept is often translated as a do- nothingness or inaction, but this (suggesting as it does a vacant attitude of passive abstention) misses the point. A better rendering is "creative quietude."

Creative quietude combines within a single individual two seemingly incompatible conditions, supreme activity and supreme relaxation. These seeming incompatibles can coexist because man is not a self-enclosed entity. He sails an unbounded sea of Tao, which feeds him, as we would say, through his subliminal mind. One way to create is through following the calculated directives of the conscious mind. The results of this mode of action, however, tend to smack more of sorting and arranging than of genuine creation. Genuine creation comes when the more abundant resources of the subliminal self are somehow released. But for this to happen a certain dissociation from the surface self is needed. The conscious mind must relax, stop standing in its own light and let go. Only so is it possible to break through the prevalent law of reversed effort in which the more we try the more our efforts boomerang.

Wu wei is the supreme action, a precious suppleness, simplicity, and freedom that flows from us, or rather through us, when our private egos and conscious efforts yield to a power not their own. In a way it is virtue approached from a direction, diametrically opposite to that of Confucius. Virtue for Confucius was every effort turned to building up a complete pattern of ideal responses to circumstances, which might thereafter be consciously imitated. Taoism's approach is the opposite, the aim is to get the self in tune with Tao and let behaviour flow spontaneously. Wiser action, and stronger action comes from a wiser and stronger being. The Tao Te Ching puts this point without wasting a single word. "The way to do," it says simply, "is to be."

How are we to describe the action that flows from a life that is grounded directly in Tao? Nurtured by a force that is infinitely subtle, infinitely intricate, it is a expressed as consummate gracefulness born from an abundant vitality. There is no need for abruptness or violence. One simply lets Tao flow in and flow out again until all life waxes and wanes and there is neither imbalance nor feverishness. Wu wei is life lived above tension. Far from inaction, however, it is the pure embodiment of "suppleness, simplicity, and freedom, a kind of pure effectiveness in which no motion is wasted on outward show.

Effectiveness of this order obviously requires an extraordinary skill, a point conveyed in the Taoist story of the fisherman, who was able to land enormous fish with a thread because it was so delicately made, that it had no weakest point at which to break. But Taoist skill is seldom noticed, for viewed externally wu wei never forcing, never under strain seems quite without effort. The secret here lies in the way it seeks out the empty spaces in life and nature, and moves through these. Chuang Tzu, the greatest popularizer of Philosophical Taoism, makes this point with his story of a butcher whose cleaver did not get dull for twenty years. Pressed for his secret the butcher replied, "Between the bones of every joint there is always some space, otherwise there could be no movement. By seeking out this space and passing through it, my cleaver lays wide the bones without touching them."

Attitudes towards nature

How should man relate himself to nature? On the whole, the modern ‘Western attitude’ has been to regard nature as an antagonist, something to be squared off against, dominated, controlled, and conquered. Taoism says that man should avoid being strident and aggressive, not only toward other men, but also toward nature. There is a profound naturalism in Taoist thought, but it is the naturalism of Rousseau, Wordsworth, Thoreau, rather than that of Galileo or Bacon.

Nature is to be befriended. When Mount Everest was scaled the phrase commonly used in the West to describe the feat was "the conquest of Everest." An Oriental whose writings have been deeply influenced by Taoism remarked, "We would put the matter differently. We would speak of 'the befriending of Everest."

Taoism seeks to be in tune with nature. Its approach is basically ecological, a characteristic that has led Joseph Needham to point out that despite China's backwardness in scientific theory, she early developed "an organic philosophy of nature . . . closely resembling that which modern science has been forced to adopt after three centuries of mechanical materialism." This ecological approach of Taoism has made it one of the inspirations of Frank Lloyd Wright. Taoist temples do not stand out from the landscape. They are nestled against the hills, back under the trees, blending in with the environment. At best man too blends in with nature. His highest achievement is to identify himself with the Tao and let it work through him.

This Taoist approach to nature has made a deep impression on Chinese art. It is no accident that the seventeenth-century "Great Period" of Chinese art coincided with a great surge of Taoist influence on the Chinese sentiment and imagination. Painters took nature as their subject, and before assuming brush and silk would go out to nature, lose themselves in it, and become one with it. They would sit for half a day or fourteen years before making a stroke. The Chinese word for landscape painting is derived from the word-roots for mountain and water, one of which suggests vastness and solitude, the other pliability, endurance, and continuous movement. Man's part in that vastness is small, so we have to look closely for people in the paintings, if we find them at all. Usually a person is climbing with his bundle, riding a buffalo, poling a boat, with his journey to make, his burden to carry, his hill to climb, his glimpse of beauty through the parting mists. He is not as formidable as a mountain; he does not live as long as a pine; yet he too belongs in the scheme of things as surely as the birds and the clouds. And through him as through the rest of the world flows the rhythmic movement of Tao.

Taoist naturalism was combined with a propensity for naturalness as well. Pomp and extravagance were regarded as pointless accretions. This drive toward simplicity separated the Taoists from the Confucians. The basic values of the two schools did not differ widely, but the Taoists had small patience with the Confucian approach to securing these values. All formalism, show and ceremony had little significance for the Taoists. What could be hoped from punctiliousness or the meticulous observance of propriety? The whole Confucian approach was artificial, a lacquered surface which was bound to prove brittle and repressive. Confucianism here was but one instance of man's general tendency to approach life in the wrong mind set.

Another feature of Taoism is its notion of the relativity of all values and, as the correlate of this principle, the identity of opposites. Here Taoism tied in with the traditional Chinese symbolism of yang and yin. This symbolism recognises a polarity of life. It sums up all life's basic oppositions: good- evil, active-passive, positive-negative, light-dark, summer- winter, male-female, etc. But though its principles are in tension, they are not flatly opposed. They complement and counterbalance each other. Each invades the other's hemisphere and establishes itself in the very centre of its opposite's territory. In the end both are resolved in an all- embracing circle, pictorial symbol of the final unity of Tao.