Overview

The ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and his pupil Theophrastus (c.370-285 B.C.), made important contributions to botany, the study of plants, but there were few significant additions to that body of knowledge by the Romans. All this knowledge was lost to Europeans after the fall of Rome in 476, when Europe settled into a period called the Dark Ages during which there was little attention to science. This period lasted until about A.D. 1000 when a curiosity about the natural world began to increase slowly. Interest was spurred by the translation of Greek and Roman texts into Latin so that the learning of the ancients again became available in Europe. This meant that by the mid-fifteenth century when movable type was invented, the stage had been set for the reemergence of science in the...