The philosophers were believe to be the first biological scientist. They believe that an individual must investigate to find answers to a variety of questions about his/her surrounding nature. One should use his/her ability to reason out and understand life and nature itself. These are the same doctrines that serves as guides to our scientists of today.

One of the greatest Philosopher who live in the time of the golden age of Greece was Aristotle. He was considered as the father of Biology due to his contribution on its early history.

Aristotle have studied the hearts and brains of animals and from this he correlated the warming-cooling functions of the heart and brain to human feelings and emotion.

Then came Galen, a roman physician who became the greatest authority on human anatomy. Galen obtained knowledge from the dissection of animals. He uses Barbary Ape as his best model of his description of human anatomy.

Andres Vesalius, a rebellious Belgian student also became a historical figure in Biology. The methods of teaching and the books of Vesalius set new and lasting standards for the anatomy science.

William Harvey, an English physician also provides contribution in the field of anatomy. He study the circulation of the blood and determined the real functions of the heart and blood vessels.

William Harvey

Image via Wikipedia

A French physiologist Rene Dutrochet and English scientist Robert Hooke followed with their discovery of the cells as the basic unit of structure of tissues.

Robert Hooke

Image via Wikipedia

This discovery can also be attributed to Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek. He is a Dutch naturalist and inventor who created the first microscope. These microscope was made of lenses that were invented by the Jansen Brothers, a Dutch spectacle makers.

Antoni Van Leeuwenhook

Image via Wikipedia

Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian sculptor, painter,engineer and architect, suggest earlier the use of magnifying glass to observe small objects before the microscope was invented.

Finally  in 1935, J. Watson and F. Crick with another scientist M. Wilkins discovered the (DNA) or the deoxyribonucleic acid. This DNA is now considered as the blue print of life.

A DNA model

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

1) The Dutch father and son Hans and Zacharias Janssen were the inventors of the first microscope. It was made of two single glass lenses and was a stepping stone not only for the development of the modern day much more complex microscope but also for the understanding of living organisms.

2) In 1676, Anton van Leeuweenhoek was the first person to observe bacteria. He described it as small creatures but it was only in 1828 when they were given their present name.

3) Plant respiration and photosynthesis are a vital part of the cycle that keeps the life on our planet going. The first person to discover these processes was Jan Ingenhausz, who in 1779 described how all life on Earth depends on the production of oxygen by plants.

4) The Dutch introduced not only the microscope in order to help us explore matters as small as the organelles of a cell, but they also invented the telescope in order to explore big objects at a long distance. It was patented by Hans Lippershey and later on a crater on the Moon was named after him in honor of his contribution.

5) Saturn’s rings were first examined by Galileo Galilei in 1610 but his means for observation were not good enough for him to determine their shape or nature. It was only 45 years later that Christian Huygens actually distinguished two rings made of dust and ice.

6) The Dutch were the ones who also discovered Australia in 1606 when a ship called Duyfken with William Jansz as captain reached the shores of Gulf of Carpentaria. Other Dutch missions got to know different parts of the continent through continuous exploration.

7) Cornelius Drebbel was a Dutch inventor who created the first submarine that could actually be navigated. He kept building more submarines with each one being bigger than the previous one. Some could carry up to 16 people. Since he was working for the Royal Navy at the time, the submarine was tested first in UK.

The artificial kidney is the actual machine that performs dialysis on patients with acute or chronic kidney conditions. The machine fulfills the functions of the kidneys and despite the fact that it cannot treat the failed organs, it is considered a popular and very successful life support.

9) The compact disk (CD) was invented by the Dutch giant Philips and first presented to the public in 1979 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Philips is also credited for the invention of audio and video tapes.

10) In the 1950s, rally driver Maurice Gatsonides needed to track his speed on the race track during practice and this is why the company founded by him invented an early version of what is now known as road-rule enforcement camera. These speed cameras are also sometimes called ‘Gatsos’ in honor of their inventor.  

Here are a few notable inventions: the electrocardiogram, the sawmill and the pendulum clock.

And not only writers, also scientists suffer from this illness. But hear we have that the possibility of falling in ridiculous , not only it has to be welcomed, but it is also necessary.

Thanks to the spontaneous generation theory -that seems today absurd and ridicule- the microscope had never be invented, because this artifact was made in order to prove or reject such theory. The theory not only was refuted but it was totally torn apart, on the other hand; the microscope would not exist without the spontaneous generation theory and that is for sure.

Also, in the Galileo times -who suffered by being put under house arrest, for the crime of telling that the Earth moves- everybody thought that the world was plain, that is why we call “planets” the body’s that orbit stars, instead of calling them “rounded” or “spheroids”. In fact, the word “planet” means plain body.

If the big geniuses of mankind would have stopped in front of the possibility of make themselves ridiculous, we all would still be living in caves, or worst, we were slipping over the branches of trees; only think about the more than two thousand failure attempts of Tomas Alba Edison, trying to put light inside a bubble of glass, and how much he was derided in his time, continuously and systematically.

If Edison would give up under the society pressures of his time, we were not have electric bulbs, film projectors, nothing at all…

But of course, I do not mean with this that everyone should publish the first thing that they think; the knack consists of listening to our hearts, if it says to us to publish our work, then we must publish it, no matter how ridiculous it seems to us; we have to do it even in order to stimulate some body’s disagreement; we never know, maybe the mentioned mister do invent something useful to make his point, something that will never be born if we were afraid of making a fool of ourselves.

So, ridiculousness not only is a thing that deserve to be applauded, because it cheers our lives with it witticisms, but it is also a necessity in order to achieve progress in all the fields of mankind knowledge.

The odyssey of thinking according to paradigms different than the ones already accepted by societies, is a hard path, but it is the only one that can drive us into progress.

(Felipe Antonio Santorelli)

–