Week 3 Day 1 History of Biology Survey

Today's reading encompasses the introduction and first four chapters of Farber, although I purchased the book and intend to read it all. Farber points out in the introduction that naming and categorizing are natural human tendencies, oing all the way back to the Genesis story. He distinguishes natural history from "folk biology" because it attempts to group and name plants, animals, and minerals and seeks underlying and overarching relationships and order. He cites the importance of natural history in terms of social, political, economic problems, and describes the conflict between religious and secular views and their interpretations of nature. I remember some of my former professors and teachers stressing to us that biology was no longer the domain of those catching and naming animals and pressing plants, and Farber uses that phrase to explain the importance of natural history and its branches then and now.

The first chapter was interesting because I learned a lot more about Linnaeus and his works, who of course I had heard of, but it also emphsized Buffon and his importance, who I knew very little about until now. I learned how Linnaeus used startling (for the time) sexual imagery to classify plants, that he was religious and linked the study of nature with the worship of God, and that he was somewhat full of himself, apparently. I learned that Buffon was initially known more for his work in the physical sciences, was more secular in his views, and leaned heavily on Aristotle and Pliny in his work. Even though the two were contemporaries, they had different viewpoints and goals as Linnaeus valued naming and classifying, and Buffon sought natural laws through study, comparison, and generalization.

Chapter 2 was concerned with the development of natural history into a scientific discipline from 1760 through 1840. It described the specimen collections of the time, and their social, scientific, and financial importance. Also discussed were the struggles of men like Verreaux and Swainson to find support and financing for their travels and collecting. Paris became for a time the center for natural history, and France was rivaled only by the Dutch. The advances in printing and lithography made knowledge more accessible to the common people, and natural history began to sub-divide into more specific disiplines as well. The works of Audubon and Gould are also discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 3 delves into the debate concerning comparative anatomy, which held significance beyond just how the animal body should be understood. Apparently there were competing ideas championed at this time by Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire, with the latter claiming that anatomical development stressed form rather than function, and the former believing that through comparative anatomy he could unravel the order in nature. Later von Baer and especially Owen further developed these notions further through archetypes and homologies.

The fourth and final chapter in this assigned reading is the jumping off point to Darwin's work, and sets the stage for his ground-breaking ideas. I was not aware of the work of Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew in this field, but allarently it was substantial according to Farber. The chapter discusses the formalization and standardization of classification and nomenclature, with Linnaeus' work forming the basis of it. Advances in taxidermy and other technical innovations are treated here as well. The major concerns at this time were variation and what Farber calls the "species problem", as well as biogeographical and ecological patterns, although the term "ecology" was not in use at the time. Humboldt, Hooker, Owen, Agassiz, and Gunther are all mentioned prominently here.

This reading has stoked my desire to learn more about the development of natural history, biology, and related fields, so I may more effectively convey these important ideas and historical events to my students. It has also better prepared me to understand the context and paradigms in place as Charles Darwin was forming and releasing his ideas, with all of their obvious significance.

Bibliographic Note:

Paul Lawrence Farber, Finding Order In Nature: The Naturalist Tradition From Linnaeus to E.O. Wilson, (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Farber, professor of the history of science at Oregon State University, examines the almost three-century-long tradition of natural history in this slim book, part of the Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science series. Natural history, according to Farber, falls between "folk biology" and mainstream science.

Further Reading Note:

Otto Brunfel, Living Images of Plants (1530)

Aristotle, History of Animals

Buffon, Natural History

Linnaeus, Plant Species (1753), Flora Lapponica (1737), and Systema naturae (1735)

the works of Pliny

William Swainson, Zoological Illustrations, (1820-23)

John James Audubon, The Birds of America (1827-38)

the works of John Gould

Georges Cuvier, Animal Kingdom... (1817)