Doctors have analysed how the mucus of a certain type of slug gives it protection against its being levered off a surface. From this, they have developed a new water-based gel for surgical repairs and wound healing. Aristotle would have been punching the air, had he not been too busy inventing logic, literary critical theory and almost everything else — in this case, biology.
In the introduction to his On the Parts of Animals, Aristotle (384-322 bc) contrasted the study of the heavens, which the ancients regarded as imperishable and eternal, with that of the earth. The former, he said, however scanty the evidence, gave most pleasure, in the same way that just half a glimpse of the person you loved was more delightful than a complete overview of anything else. But the real world, being immediately at hand, could be fully understood, and that counteracted ‘the loftier interest of celestial phenomena’.
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