The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

Aristotle is remembered above all as a philosopher, but he was also one of antiquity’s most ambitious students of the living world. In The Lagoon, evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi returns to the eastern Aegean and the island of Lesbos, where Aristotle observed, dissected and classified animals more than two thousand years ago, to recover his remarkable work as a pioneering biologist.

Following Aristotle’s investigations of anatomy, reproduction, behaviour and classification, Leroi considers both his perceptive observations and his mistakes, placing them within the development of a systematic approach to nature. The book also shows how Aristotle’s biological research was intertwined with his wider philosophy and how fishermen, farmers and the landscapes and creatures around him informed his inquiries. Part history of science, part intellectual biography and part journey through the Aegean, The Lagoon presents a vivid reassessment of Aristotle as an investigator of the natural world.