Stručné dějiny biologie – Komárek Stanislav (2017)

The book, which covers the history of biology from its beginnings to the discovery of the structure of DNA (1953), can attract not only professional biologists but also all interested laypeople among the more educated readership due to its conciseness and clarity. The text is accompanied by numerous period illustrations that evoke the spirit and atmosphere of the research and education of the time and the connection of biological thinking to contemporary intellectual currents. Why should we be interested in the history of biology (or any other field)? What is a paradigm? How did archaic peoples and ancient civilizations perceive the living world? How did science emerge in ancient Greece? How did Rome continue on this path? How did the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance view the living world? How did the Cartesian turn manifest itself in the Baroque era? How did systematics, paleontology begin, and how did individual national schools in biology – French, English, German – profile? How did evolutionary thinking emerge? How did genetics, microbiology, and ethology begin? What role did "great" history, especially the last world war, play in thinking about the living world?