Aspiring naturalists and their frustrations: the case of William Swainson (1789–1855)

Abstract

lack of a detailed study on Swainson is all the more surprising when we consider his many talents and note the numerous contexts within the history of natural history in which he was a significant character. Like others of his generation, Swainson was a collector. He assembled sizeable and significant collections and corresponded with three collectors. He went far beyond collecting, however, for he was a prolific, possibly too prolific, author. His publications encompass a broad range of topics, from garden pests to his neobaroque version of the quinary system, and his extension of the newly discovered lithographic techniques to natural history was central in the history of the depiction of natural history objects. In a meaningful sense, then, Swainson is important for an understanding of the theoretical, empirical, and practical aspects of nineteenth-ce ntury natural history. In his personal life he also reflected a common experience. His persistent efforts to support himself and his family is part of the discouraging history of the slow professionalization of science and reveals the institutional inertia of the day. Even in emigration, Swainson is part of a larger story of the growth of the British Empire and the difficulties of colonial science. William Swainson was a man of many parts with a complex personality and would be a rewarding subject for a serious biography. I wish here to consider merely one facet of his life in order to illustrate a particular problem. Even a casual reading of Swainson's autobiographical memoir or his correspondence reveals a fundamental tension between the enormous and exciting potential in the field of natural history and the staggering frustrations that confronted aspiring naturalists. To a large extent that tension was a natural consequence of the transformation of the role of the naturalist occasioned by the dramatic changes in natural history in the first half of the nineteenth century. Natural history was ramifying into separate branches, later to become independent scientific disciplines. The nature of its institutions and audience was in the process of metamorphosis ; the growth of its empirical base was accelerating; and its theoretical foundations were in flux. These changes, combined with the many social and cultural changes that altered From Linnaeus to Darwin: commentaries on the history of biology and geology. Society for the History of Natural History, London, 1985.