What is anatomy?

Anatomy is not merely the separation of parts, the accurate description of bones, ligaments, muscles, vessels, nerves and so forth, but an attempt to grasp the totality of body structure, engaging many disciplines, constantly searching for underlying principles and viewing the living frame as an extraordinarily complex, labile entity with a temporal dimension, connected by evolutionary history to all other living organisms, expressing various morphologies as it develops, matures, reproduces, ages and dies, engaging in a plethora of integrated functions.
Furthermore, from a philosophical viewpoint, anatomy is not merely the structural biology of an animal species which happens to be human. Because we are self-aware, and the human body is the medium through which our experience of the world and our responses to it are transacted, the study of the human has a unique place in establishing the image we have of ourselves; ultimately the prosaic descriptions of the bones, muscles, blood vessels and neural pathways are the context of our experience of life.

From Gray's Anatomy, Thirty-Eighth Edition.

william, 2006.11.06