Theophrastus shares Aristotle’s methodological insight that the scientific inquiry unfolds in stages, and that the two main stages of any scientific inquiry are the collection of the relevant data followed by their explanation – the pre-explanatory and the explanatory stage of inquiry, respectively. This chapter shows that we should speak of two main stages of inquiry because the explanatory stage itself may unfold in various stages. In other words, the work that is required to arrive at an adequate (i.e., scientific) explanation may take place in steps and may require accomplishing different tasks. The chapter looks in some detail at how Theophrastus adopts this style of inquiry in his explanation of the various ways in which plants propagate.

In popular narratives of paleoanthropology and human origins, Charles Darwin is customarily cited as the first person to propose in 1871 that the African continent was the original home of the human species—a proposition subsequently supported in 1925 by Raymond Dart’s announcement of the discovery of Australopithecus africanus. While correct in its details, this mythological reading of the discovery of African origins elides critical points of debate and disjuncture and quietly obscures the formative roles of race science and racist science in the development of the evolutionary sciences. This chapter explores whether Darwin’s original hypothesis was as unusual as customarily claimed; when and how Dart’s Australopithecus came to be accepted as valid evolutionary evidence; and traces the mid-twentieth century origins of the myth itself.

The first and most important step into the Peripatetic study of living beings is the observation that life takes many forms. In the sublunary world, it takes the form of plant and animal life (with human life as a special kind of animal life). When Aristotle and Theophrastus speak of animals and plants, they never assume that they are a single form of life. This is confirmed by what we read at the outset of the Meteorology, where Aristotle outlines an ambitious research program that ends with separate yet coordinated studies of “animals and plants.” Whether there is unity, and how much unity there is, in these two studies remains an open question at the outset of the Meteorology. But when we look at the two corpora of writings that Aristotle and Theophrastus have left on the topic of animals and plants, we see that the unity they are able secure is limited. Last but not least, this chapter shows that the study of the nutritive soul advanced in Aristotle’s De anima cannot secure unity within the study of animals and plants.

Aristotle’s De anima provides the foundation for a theoretically informed study of perishable life on the crucial assumption that the soul is that which distinguishes what is alive from what is not. It is because Aristotle and Theophrastus take animals and plants to be different kinds of perishable living beings that they are justified in approaching the study of perishable life through separate studies of animals and plants. The chapter offers a survey of the discourse on and around life before Aristotle and Theophrastus with a focus on Plato and the doxographical information on the Presocratic investigation of nature. It also considers the way in which the study of life is narrow down to the study of perishable life, that is animals and plants, as a result of the conceptual work done in Aristotle’s De anima.

The idea that Darwin rejected Lamarck’s ideas of use and disuse and the inheritance of acquired traits emerged in the late nineteenth century as biologists debated the mechanisms by which evolution occurs.  In characterizing “pure Darwinism,” critics and enthusiasts alike sought to purge Darwinism of any reliance on the idea that changes acquired in the as the result of the use or disuse of organs could be passed along to the next generation via heredity.  But Darwin himself was a strong believer in the idea.  Through the successive editions of the Origin of Species he represented the inheritance of acquired characters as an important supplement to natural selection. In his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, he not only gave examples of the inherited effects of use and disuse, but he was also pleased to propose how his “Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis” could successfully explain the phenomenon.  August Weismann’s attacks on the inheritance of acquired characters, beginning in the 1880s, were the primary impetus for the idea’s decline in popularity among biological theorists – and ultimately for the widespread forgetting of the fact that this was an idea that Darwin himself explicitly endorsed.

Charles Darwin publicly denied being influenced by the evolutionary ideas of his grandfather Erasmus, yet he took the trouble to write the biography of this ancestor he never met and praised him for possessing “the true spirit of the philosopher”. Although Charles’s natural selection was formulated within the context of Victorian capitalism, their theories show some striking similarities; moreover, there is clear evidence – such as annotations – that Charles closely studied Erasmus’s writings on evolution. Erasmus’s behavior and beliefs were inevitably conveyed down to following generations, including his warnings about hereditary alcoholism and the family abhorrence of slavery. It was in Charles’s interests to distance himself from a discredited relative and present natural selection as the only viable alternative to repeated miraculous creation. The extent of Erasmus’s effect on his grandson must remain speculative, but it cannot be dismissed.

Social scientists recently claimed Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) is a racist text; that Darwin’s racism blinded him, impacting his science. Biologists and philosophers countered that Darwin’s work should be championed because it undercut slavery-justifying polygenism (independent origins for human races). Others extol Darwin for his emotional condemnation of slavery when he first encountered it on the Beagle voyage. This essay systematically explores Darwin’s views on human race expressed in Descent and then digs through a half-century of Darwin’s correspondence with prominent scientists to answer the question: what were Darwin’s views not just on the human torture involved in the enslavement process but on human race more broadly?

Many recent books, including the present one, aim to identify and destroy dozens of myths in the history of science. This destruction is only too easy for a “myth” that is just an enduring mistake. To qualify as a bona fide myth a false claim should be persistent and widespread and have a plausible and assignable reason for its endurance and cultural relevance. The most interesting myths for historians have an additional attribute: they transmit a useful caricature or an inspiring allusion. Although erroneous or fabulous, such myths are not entirely wrong, and their exaggerations bring out aspects of history that might otherwise be ignored.

This chapter plays an important role in the argument of the book. It shows that there is room in Aristotle’s life for a study of what is common to animals and plants in addition to separate studies of animals and plants. At the same time, it shows that what Aristotle is able, or willing, to say in common for animals and plants is truly limited. By the end of the chapter the reader will see that the Peripatetic study of life is a complex scientific endeavor consisting of at least three components: a study of what is common to animals and plants followed by separate yet coordinated studies of animals and plants. What Aristotle is able, or willing, to say in common for animals and plants is to be found within the boundaries of project of the Parva naturalia.

This chapter introduces the reader to how Theophrastus approaches the topic of plants by offering a selective discussion of the first book of History of Plants. This book is a prolegomenon to the study of plants. It is also a liminal space where Theophrastus negotiates the transition from the study of animals to the study of plants. From the very way Theophrastus refers to animals, we can infer that Theophrastus builds his whole edifice on the results achieved in the study of animals. This overall approach not only confirms that the Peripatetic study of perishable living beings is approached via separate studies of animals and plants but also suggests that the relevant order of study is first animals, then plants.