The Growth of Biological Thought

Short description: 1982 book by Ernst Mayr

The Growth of Biological Thought

Title page for The Growth of Biological Thought (1982)

Author| Ernst Mayr
Language| English
Genre| Non-fiction
Publisher| Belknap Press

Publication date

| 1982
Pages| 992
ISBN| 0674364465

The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance is a book written by Ernst Mayr, first published in 1982 by Belknap Press and is as much a book of philosophy and history as it is of biology.[1][2][3][4]

It is a sweeping, academic study of the first 2,400 years of the science of biology. It focuses largely on how the philosophical assumptions of biologists influenced and limited their understanding. It includes many important general observations about the role of philosophy in scientific inquiry and the place of biology amongst the sciences.[2]

## Reception

Horace Freeland Judson praised the book for its extremely extensive coverage which he likened to an encyclopaedia. He commended the book for examining through the lens of evolution the discipline whose central theory is the theory of evolution, writing that it "turns the scholarly component of Darwinian method reflexively onto the evolution of the very disciplines that make up evolutionary theory".[5]

## References

1. ↑ Cachel, Susan (1986). "The Growth of Biological Thought Revisited". American Anthropologist 88 (2): 452–454. ISSN 0002-7294. https://www.jstor.org/stable/677578.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Greene, John C. (1992). "From Aristotle to Darwin: Reflections on Ernst Mayr's Interpretation in "The Growth of Biological Thought"". Journal of the History of Biology 25 (2): 257–284. ISSN 0022-5010. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4331216.
3. ↑ Futuyma, Douglas J. (1982). "Review of The Growth of Biological Thought". Science 216 (4548): 842–844. ISSN 0036-8075. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1687518.
4. ↑ Mayr, Ernst (1982). The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance. Cambridge, MA, and London, England: Harvard University Press. https://archive.org/details/growthofbiologic0000mayr/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater.
5. ↑ Judson, Horace Freeland (6 May 1983). "An Imperial Presence" (in en). The Sciences 23 (3): 20–23. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.1983.tb02611.x. ISSN 0036-861X. https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2326-1951.1983.tb02611.x. Retrieved 23 March 2026.

## External links

* The Growth of Biological Thought \- Google Books

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