Aristotle's lagoon

Many modern biologists see anything before Darwin as prehistory: research riddled with misunderstandings and errors. But this view misses an extraordinary range of work over centuries with much of value and insight. So a new look at the biological work of Aristotle, coming from a Greek island almost 2,500 years ago, provides a fresh and fascinating reminder of ancient thinking. A new television programme by evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi, of Imperial College London, on the biological work of Aristotle shown by the BBC last month, highlights just how much some ancient research illuminated the biological world. “Aristotle’s biology is almost completely forgotten,” says Leroi, who recalls coming across a translation of Aristotle’s biological work Historia Animalium in an Athens bookshop a decade ago. “In the ten years since, I’ve been trying to understand what had been going on in Aristotle’s magnificent mind.” Aristotle was a member of the fourth-century BC Athens elite. He was born in Thrace in the north-east of modern Greece, and his father was physician to King Philip of neighbouring Macedonia. He went to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy where he stayed until Plato’s death in 348 BC. As Leroi recounts, Aristotle then took a two-year trip to the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos, to study the fauna in and around a dramatic lagoon, now called Kallonis,