Chapter overview

Chapter 4 starts with a section on environmental literacy in prehistoric times, but going beyond the simple analysis of ancient Greek or Egyptian knowledge common to many books on the history of biology. We take a developmental theory perspective to reflect on the types and levels of understanding that emerged in prehistoric times and which might still be around in different current understandings of life.

We deal in some detail with the fundamental changes of constructing cosmology, starting at the rise of science in ancient Greece, a period considered as the cradle of modern sciences, and follow through to the beginning of medieval times (200–1200). The rebirth of inquiry in Europe after the medieval period occurred following the establishment of universities in the twelfth century. The sixteenth century saw the emergence of modern botany and, soon after, of zoology including the mastery of anatomy. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries introduced inventions like the microscope, which allowed people to see microbes, developing embryos, and capillaries.

The discipline of biology developed in the nineteenth century in three streams of knowledge: theories of evolution, the naturalist conception, and the understanding of how human societies adapt to environmental settings.

Finally, this chapter deals with the emergence of ecology, which Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) defined at the end of the nineteenth century as “the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment” (Haeckel, 1866, p. 286; see Greene, 1961, p. 3) and also biosemiotics, the cognitive side of animal perception, which can be conceived as a biological conception, that is the body–mind complementarity on the side of the animal.