Mycology Euripides (480-406 B.C.). The Greek philosopher Theophrastos of Eresos (371-288 B.C.) was perhaps the first to try to systematically classify plants; mushrooms were considered to be plants missing certain organs. It was later Pliny the Elder (23–79 A.D.), who wrote about truffles in his encyclopedia "Naturalis historia". The word "mycology" comes from the Greek: μύκης ("mukēs"), meaning "fungus" and the suffix ("-logia"), meaning "study". The Middle Ages saw little advancement in the body of knowledge about fungi. Rather, the invention of the printing press allowed some authors to disseminate superstitions and misconceptions about the fungi that had been perpetuated by
History of biology study of animals and plants. "Natural history" referred to the descriptive aspects of biology, though it also included mineralogy and other non-biological fields; from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the unifying framework of natural history was the "scala naturae" or Great Chain of Being. "Natural philosophy" and "natural theology" encompassed the conceptual and metaphysical basis of plant and animal life, dealing with problems of why organisms exist and behave the way they do, though these subjects also included what is now geology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Physiology and (botanical) pharmacology were the province of medicine. "Botany", "zoology", and (in