THE CONCEPT OF PLANT LIFE: THE DAWN

An elementary but correct concept of plant life has come to us in writings of Theophrastus who divided the plant life in its three basic stages: generation, sprouting, growth. This image of plants remained practically unchanged until the seventeenth-century, when the scientific method based on experimentation was introduced by Bacon. The invention of the microscope and the change of the traditional alchemy for an embryonic chemistry allowed some penetrating minds to look upon plants as highly complex living structures, to which had to correspond some specific functions. The observations and deductions of Mariotte, Malpighi, Grew and Ray revealed that the plant was operating as a real factory that, with the contribution of sunrays, changed inert matter in the components of plant structure and that these transformations could give an account for its concept of life. The subsequent work of Hales supported the concept of plant life as a materialistic processes planned by a divine architect. With Hales began a new phase of research, which reached its full development from the nineteenth century.