Physiology: The Language of Life and Nature

This book paints a flowing picture of the relationship beween life and nature, through the evolution of a word – physiology. Today, it denotes a scientific discipline at the intersection of biology and medicine, signifying the "study of life". Yet, physiology manifests a split personality in the course of history. It came down to us from the ancient Greeks, where it represented the "study of nature", or "natural philosophy" – the precursor of modern-day "science".
Physiology originates from an older Greek root, physis – meaning "nature" itself – that stretches far back to the birth of Greek thought. How did this word generate two such disparate meanings ? What does this word tell us, historically, about humankind's grasp of the essence of nature and the essence of life – and the interrelationship between the two ? The author follows an etymological path into the distant past, in writing the biography of the word "physiology".
The book delves into linguistic pre-history, in search of the primordially interwoven views of life and nature – and the words that symbolized those views. It tracks the evolving meaning of those words in Western civilization across time, space, language, and culture.