Palaeontological pedagogues of the 1830s: the prehistory of the ‘history of life’ genre

Abstract

AbstractAlthough the findings of the discipline of palaeontology had been rich enough since the 1830s to render a chronological history of nature conceivable, a recognizable genre fulfilling this purpose did not fully emerge until the 1860s. The lapse of time was largely due to the conceptual and formal difficulties of marrying content of adequate empirical credibility to a narrative of adequate readability. Early efforts were made by pedagogues and popularizers more than by men of science. This article considers four examples of such pieces, written between 1828 and 1837, and studies the ways in which their authors experimented with traditional and less traditional pedagogical formats in their various attempts to promote specific outlooks on the nature of natural process and on the place of empirical science in the education of their essentially middle-class audiences. It argues that the particular requisites of the pedagogical mode would help set the norm for the mature genre in later years.