Someone in 1st Century India got human embryonic limb development perfectly right. The progressive emergence of parts, even the timing, exactly right. Today, I'll start a new thing about the ancient origins developmental biology, the science of embryos. 🧵1/15 #TheLongBibliography
#DevBiol
#SciHist
#DevBiol
#SciHist
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this is my oldest scientific book, Ontonegy always been interesting to me
Especially loved your use of "but first" on post 8 of 15 😉
Chapter One is about how taking notice of the words we use can help us connect the exhilarating present of developmental biology to its mind-boggling past. We’ll end with the Garbhāvakrāntisūtra, a 1st Century Buddhist rumination on embryonic development. But we’ll start with John Saunders. 2/n
https://tinyurl.com/yhnvftax
https://tinyurl.com/5bcbpm4n
We don’t think about it much, but developmental biology is like anything else that humans invented: Its flourishing required us to make up words. We picked up 'bud' and threw it against the embryo 100 years ago. But we've been needing new words for embryos for something like 3000 years. 5/n
“And out of the soil (‘adamah) the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the human (‘adam) to see what he would call them: and whatsoever he called them, that was the name thereof.”
Genesis 2:19
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/anlage_n?tab=etymology#3185708