Natural Historians Research Articles

Protestant Hermeneutics and the Persistence of Moral Meanings in Early Modern Natural Histories

Abstract Peter Harrison explains the disappearance of symbolic meanings of animals from seventeenth-century works in natural history through what he calls the “literalist mentality of the reformers.” By contrast, the present article argues in favor of a different understanding of the connection between hermeneutics and Protestant natural history. Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Jean Calvin continued to assign moral meanings to natural particulars, and moral interpretations can still be found in the writings of Protestant naturalists such as Conrad Gesner, Caspar Heldelinus, Jeremias Wilde, Thomas Penny, and Thomas Moffett. If there are differences between Protestant and Catholic interpretations of animals, then these differences derive from the reformer’s greater insistence on providing textual support for assigning symbolic meanings, their resulting greater reluctance in assigning prophetic meanings to animals, and their elimination of spiritual interpretations of animals that are in tension with central tenets of Protestant theology. These differences in hermeneutics and theology may explain some of the divergences between the symbolic interpretations of animals proposed by Protestant natural historians and their Catholic colleague, Ulisse Aldrovandi.

"Pray Observe How Time Slips By:" Collaborators, Assistants, and the Background Dynamics in the Publication of Darwin's Cirripedia Project.

This study investigates nineteenth century natural history practices through the lens of the Actor-Network Theory, which posits that scientific practice is shaped by an intricate network of interactions between human and non-human actors. At the core of this research is the analysis of correspondence between Charles Darwin and his collaborators during the Cirripedia Project, which unveils a complex landscape of negotiations with illustrators, funders, specimen owners, and translators, among other stakeholders and interested parties. The study goes beyond the final outcomes of scientific research, delving into behind-the-scenes interactions, and hidden constructions, shedding light on the complex dynamics and actors that conventional scientific narratives often overlook. In general, this approach provides a detailed and insightful view of the underlying processes of nineteenth-century scientific practice, underscoring the importance of epistolary correspondence as a central element in producing scientific knowledge at the time, and in particular it reveals to us how much Darwin was himself involved in the production of his famous work on barnacles. By emphasizing the intricacies of research, this study enriches our understanding of Darwin's work as well as natural history practices in the 19th century, highlighting the complexity and diversity of actors and agents involved in shaping scientific knowledge.

Rethinking Pliny’s “Sicilian Crocus”: Ecophysiology, Environment, and Classical Texts

Classical scholars have long held that the saffron in widespread use throughout the ancient Mediterranean was Crocus sativus (Iridaceae), a sterile triploid descendant of the wild Crocus cartwrightianus, and indeed use of Crocus sativus in antiquity has been extensively borne out both by iconographic and phylogenetic studies. Two principal scholars of the Roman world, Dioscorides the physician and Pliny the natural historian, disagreed radically over the virtues and commercial value of saffron crocus from Sicily, with one praising its quality, and the other excoriating it. This study draws on ecophysiology, classical texts, environmental archeology, and phytochemistry to explain this disagreement and its implications. It explores the potential impact of microclimate on crocus cultivation in the ancient Mediterranean and proposes a new species identification for Sicilian crocus: Crocus longiflorus. The identification of Crocus longiflorus as “Sicilian saffron” offers an important corrective to the assumption that Crocus sativus was the sole crocus species of commercial value in the ancient Mediterranean and renews attention to the economic potential and utility of an indigenous southern Italian species overlooked in classical and later scholarship.

Research on Tracking and Positioning Technology for Structural Components of Assembled Buildings

This article critically examines Charles Bonnet’s seminal contributions to experimental science, particularly through his influential work, ‘Research on the Use of Leaves.’ The primary objective is to delineate the functions and forms of natural experimentation as they were understood and practiced in the mid-18th century. During this period, scientists esteemed experimentation as the zenith of scientific proof, acutely cognizant of its multifaceted functional and typological aspects. Their methodology was characterized by a detailed narration of research methodologies, fostering a ‘rhetoric of transparency’ in scientific discourse. Nevertheless, the advent of new norms in scientific discourse during the 19th century, coupled with a paradigmatic philosophical shift in the 20th century, resulted in the marginalization of empirical practices of the Enlightenment era. Contemporary historians are now endeavoring to reconcile significant terminological discrepancies and to recontextualize the divergent methodologies among natural historians of that epoch. This involves a critical distinction between exploratory and demonstrative (or discriminant) forms of experimentation. Bonnet’s systematic preference for discriminant experimentation serves as a quintessential example of the logical approach in natural history. However, this perspective does not wholly represent the 18th-century ‘art of observation,’ which embraced a plethora of methodologies including taxonomy, anatomical dissection, chemical analysis, and physical measurements.

Regression Analysis of the Relationship Between ESG Performance and Firms’ Technological Innovation Capability

This article critically examines Charles Bonnet’s seminal contributions to experimental science, particularly through his influential work, ‘Research on the Use of Leaves.’ The primary objective is to delineate the functions and forms of natural experimentation as they were understood and practiced in the mid-18th century. During this period, scientists esteemed experimentation as the zenith of scientific proof, acutely cognizant of its multifaceted functional and typological aspects. Their methodology was characterized by a detailed narration of research methodologies, fostering a ‘rhetoric of transparency’ in scientific discourse. Nevertheless, the advent of new norms in scientific discourse during the 19th century, coupled with a paradigmatic philosophical shift in the 20th century, resulted in the marginalization of empirical practices of the Enlightenment era. Contemporary historians are now endeavoring to reconcile significant terminological discrepancies and to recontextualize the divergent methodologies among natural historians of that epoch. This involves a critical distinction between exploratory and demonstrative (or discriminant) forms of experimentation. Bonnet’s systematic preference for discriminant experimentation serves as a quintessential example of the logical approach in natural history. However, this perspective does not wholly represent the 18th-century ‘art of observation,’ which embraced a plethora of methodologies including taxonomy, anatomical dissection, chemical analysis, and physical measurements.

The Relationship Between a Green, Low-carbon and Recycling Economy, Economic Policy and Industrial Structure Development

This article critically examines Charles Bonnet’s seminal contributions to experimental science, particularly through his influential work, ‘Research on the Use of Leaves.’ The primary objective is to delineate the functions and forms of natural experimentation as they were understood and practiced in the mid-18th century. During this period, scientists esteemed experimentation as the zenith of scientific proof, acutely cognizant of its multifaceted functional and typological aspects. Their methodology was characterized by a detailed narration of research methodologies, fostering a ‘rhetoric of transparency’ in scientific discourse. Nevertheless, the advent of new norms in scientific discourse during the 19th century, coupled with a paradigmatic philosophical shift in the 20th century, resulted in the marginalization of empirical practices of the Enlightenment era. Contemporary historians are now endeavoring to reconcile significant terminological discrepancies and to recontextualize the divergent methodologies among natural historians of that epoch. This involves a critical distinction between exploratory and demonstrative (or discriminant) forms of experimentation. Bonnet’s systematic preference for discriminant experimentation serves as a quintessential example of the logical approach in natural history. However, this perspective does not wholly represent the 18th-century ‘art of observation,’ which embraced a plethora of methodologies including taxonomy, anatomical dissection, chemical analysis, and physical measurements.

Molecular phylogenetics facilitates the first historical biogeographic analysis of the hammerhead worms (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Bipaliinae), with the description of twelve new species and two new genera.

The hammerhead worms constitute a land planarian subfamily (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Bipaliinae) that is popular among natural historians as well as citizen scientists due to their characteristic semi-lunar-shaped head, the striking colours of many species, and the worldwide presence of introduced species, which has raised much concern about their putative impact on the receiving ecosystems. Despite such current awareness, the majority of Bipaliinae species was described before the second half of the 20th century. Over the past few decades, description of new species has been rather scarce. In the present paper, we describe twelve new species and two new genera from Madagascar, Borneo, and Japan, mainly using specimens that form part of the collections of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden. Species identification has been based on morphology, inner anatomy, and, when available, molecular information. Our molecular phylogenetic tree suggests that either Malagasy or Bornean representatives form the sister-group to the rest of Bipaliinae. The phylogeny suggests also that the Bipaliinae comprises several new and, as yet, undescribed genera. Although the geographical origin of the subfamily is uncertain and may involve either Madagascar or the Bornean region, a molecular time-calibration of the phylogenetic tree indicated that the origin of the Bipaliinae may date back to about 253 Mya, placing its origin near the Permian-Triassic transition and, thus, on Pangea.

Finding Christ in roots and seeds: crucifixes produced by nature in Quaresmio’s Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio

In his Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio (1639), Francesco Quaresmio devotes a digression to three highly peculiar objects: two plant roots grown into the shape of a crucifix (one of them discovered in the vicinity of Jerusalem), and a figure of the crucified Christ sprouted from a nut collected by a pilgrim near the Holy Sepulchre. This article explores the methods employed by Quaresmio in the study of these objects, which belonged to a larger group of images apparently produced by nature discussed in the works of late medieval and early modern travellers, religious writers, natural historians and antiquarians. It examines the use that Quaresmio made of autopsy, visual reproduction, and witness interviews in researching the history of the three crucifixes. At the same time, it shows how his adoption of empirical methods went hand in hand with devotional preoccupations, bringing to the forefront Quaresmio’s conception of the relationship between nature and the divine, as well as his belief in the complementarity of natural evidence, historical knowledge, and biblical exegesis.

Introduction

The seventeenth volume in the series presents articles on the aurora borealis published in the journal of the Swedish Societas Regia Literaria et Scientiarum (now Kungl. Vetenskaps-Societeten i Uppsala) covering the years 1740 to 1750. In this period, the Acta of the society were edited by the natural historian Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), who showed less interest in the aurora than his predecessors. One article on the aurora by Anders Celsius and another by his assistant Olof Peter Hiorter were however published. They are presented here along with the obituaries for three central auroral researchers from early eighteenth-century Sweden – Erik Johan Burman, Conrad Quensel and Celsius. In the Introduction, neo-Latinist and historian of science Per Pippin Aspaas summarizes these texts and provides a short history of the society in the period.

An agnostic approach to ancient landscapes

We argue that the phenomenological or ‘agnostic’ approach to evolutionary systems advocated by Thomas Henry Huxley is applicable in anthropological archaeology and show how agnosticism helps defuse the tension between humanists, natural philosophers and natural historians in integrative research. We deploy problem-framing methods from policy-relevant research in a palaeoanthropological context, developing a model of complex (scale-dependent, irreversible) causality and applying it to the problem of human-landscape interaction and primate foot anatomy. We illustrate this process with a single iteration of the ‘project cycle’ focussed on human-landscape interaction. Modern humans are co-operative resilience feeders, exploiting complex causality by perturbing stable, unproductive landscapes and feeding on the fluxes of energy and resources released as they spring back. Is it possible that this resiliencefeeding is older than Homo sapiens?

Encapsulated in sediments: eDNA deciphers the ecosystem history of one of the most polluted European marine sites

The Anthropocene is characterized by dramatic ecosystem changes driven by human activities. The impact of these activities can be assessed by different geochemical and paleontological proxies. However, each of these proxies provides only a fragmentary insight into the effects of anthropogenic impacts. It is highly challenging to reconstruct, with a holistic view, the state of the ecosystems from the preindustrial period to the present day, covering all biological components, from prokaryotes to multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we used sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) archives encompassing all trophic levels of biodiversity to reconstruct the two century-natural history in Bagnoli-Coroglio (Gulf of Pozzuoli, Tyrrhenian Sea), one of the most polluted marine-coastal sites in Europe. The site was characterized by seagrass meadows and high eukaryotic diversity until the beginning of the 20th century. Then, the ecosystem completely changed, with seagrasses and associated fauna as well as diverse groups of planktonic and benthic protists being replaced by low diversity biota dominated by dinophyceans and infaunal metazoan species. The sedaDNA analysis revealed a five-phase evolution of the area, where changes appear as the result of a multi-level cascade effect of impacts associated with industrial activities, urbanization, water circulation and land-use changes. The sedaDNA allowed to infer reference conditions that must be considered when restoration actions are to be implemented.

Knowing Old Age in the Renaissance: Medicine, Poetry, and Spirituality in Ulisse Aldrovandi's Encyclopedia of Old Age.

Over more than thirty years the Bolognese botanist, natural historian, and physician Ulisse Aldrovandi compiled his Pandechion epistemonicon-a manuscript encyclopedia composed of pasted note slips drawn from books he was reading. This article examines the 580 slips that comprise Aldrovandi's Pandechion entry on old age. The entry allows us to examine how an early modern physician and his intellectual community approached old age as an epistemological problem with medical, poetic, and spiritual dimensions. Aldrovandi's engagement with old age in the Pandechion presents a fluid set of disciplinary boundaries for how we understand old age in the past and present.

Natural Selection Shadowed Forth: Aristotle’s <em>De partibus animalium</em> after Darwin

<p>Until the last years of his life, Charles Darwin had actually never read Aristotle. The sole reference he makes to his naturalist forebear in <em>On the Origin of Species</em> came in an addition to the fourth edition, published in 1866, in which he mistakenly refers to Aristotle’s summation of Empedocles’ position at <em>Physica</em> II 8, as Aristotle’s own, and notes that ‘we see here the principle of natural selection shadowed forth’ (while disputing the specific scientific point Aristotle – though actually Empedocles – was supposedly making). So when his friend William Ogle, a minor scientist and physician, and an evangelist Christian, published a translation of Aristotle’s <em>De partibus animalium</em> in 1882 and sent a copy to Darwin, he was able to declare that he felt “some self-importance in thus being a kind of formal introducer of the father of Naturalists [Aristotle] to his great modern successor [Darwin].” Ogle, who despite his religious inclinations was nevertheless a strong proponent of Darwin’s theories, did not agree with Aristotle’s scientific theories – not least because Aristotle’s teleological model of animal development, which had been adopted as a model by many post-classical Christian scientists and theologians for centuries, was dealt a serious blow by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. So it is perhaps surprising to see Ogle produce a translation of one of Aristotle’s major biological treatises. By looking at key passages of Aristotle and Ogle’s translation, this paper will examine the reasons for Ogle’s curious choice to publish his work, setting it into the wider scientific, and Darwinian, context of late-nineteenth century Britain, and explaining how Aristotle the teleologist was used by Ogle to re-enforce Darwin’s position as a modern natural historian.</p>

Scorpions (Tityus dinizi) in a Historical Site of the State of Amazonas, Brazil.

The natural beauty of the Amazon attracts tourists and natural historians from all over the world.1,2 In the region of Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, the tourist attractions include places such as museums, jungle hotels, zoos, walks through the forest, rivers, and beaches.2 A popular site is the ruins of Village of Paricatuba (3°04'58.1

'Ugly and smelly or useful insect hunters?' Perceptions of and attitudes towards bats in the turn of the twentieth-century public sphere in Barcelona.

In recent years, historians and sociologists of science have shown how turn of the century natural history research and its public communication in Barcelona was intrinsically attached to certain political orientations and the historical context. Likewise, the way society perceived bats and promoted their ecological services has been increasingly researched by the community of bat researchers. In this article, I describe attitudes towards and perceptions of bats in the 'public sphere' of Barcelona in that period and examine them using public communication of science and history of science analytical tools. I performed an exhaustive search of the available newspaper and magazine articles using the Catalan and Spanish words for 'bat' in the online search engines of the national Catalan and Spanish libraries from 1888 to 1929. I compiled and reviewed a wide range of periodicals, covering different political orientations and representing several different types of publication. The articles were classified into four different categories. First, bats were commonly used as a symbol to represent the city and right-wing, conservative politics. Second, bats were often linked to negative adjectives that portrayed them as ugly, disgusting or diabolic. Third, many articles made an active effort to stop children chasing and killing bats. And fourth, I also identified a non-organised group of popularisers across the whole media spectrum who promoted what we call today the ecological services provided by bats, and especially their role as agricultural pest controllers. This study provides a better understanding of science popularisation, and specifically, perceptions of and attitudes towards bats during the studied period. This approach illustrates how historical accounts can be used today to improve perceptions of bats and suggest a more complex context of science popularisation.

Retro review: Fossils

The monographs of the New Naturalist book series have been a source of information for natural historians in the British Isles since the 1940s. Unlike the books dedicated to birds, insects, plants and other aspects of our natural environment, the only volume devoted specifically to Fossils was first published in 1960. Over 60 years later, is it still worthy of our attention?

Malinowski and malacology: global value systems and the issue of duplicates.

This article situates the collecting practices of museums of natural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in dialogue with similar practices amongst societies in the Pacific by focusing on how European curators, dealers in natural history and Pacific Islanders shared a common fascination with Spondylus shells. In particular, this article examines the processes for turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens. Spondylus shells were crucial for regulating gift and commercial exchanges in the societies of both regions. Famously, the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski claimed that these shells were an essential element of the gift-based kula exchange, which helped him distinguish Western capitalist society from less developed societies without commercial trade. Yet Spondylus shells were also collected and exchanged as gifts amongst British and European naturalists in this period, performing the same roles as in Melanesia. In addition, such gift exchanges could only come into being thanks to the actions of commercially motivated dealers, located both in the Pacific and in Europe, who were the suppliers of these shells both to Melanesian participants in the kula and to Western natural historians and collectors. These observations call into question earlier arguments that equate modernity with the rise of commercial capitalism. It is instead claimed that commercial and gift exchanges were intricately connected and reliant on each other throughout the period, whether in the worlds of Western museums or in Pacific archipelagos. The act of turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens was the key tool for regulating these exchanges.

A science for gods, a science for humans: Kant on teleological speculations in natural history

Kant's forthright rejection of rampant, ungrounded speculations in natural science, including in natural history, is well known. For instance, he dismisses the wild, unwarranted developmental histories of other early natural historians, such as Buffon and Herder, as “daring adventure[s] of reason.” However, as I show in this paper, Kant himself made use of teleological speculations in natural history, particularly in his three essays on race. I argue that, for Kant, speculations about nature's purposes are necessary to explain and to buttress the unification of organisms in real species, despite observable and heritable variations among members of these species. Without hypothesizing about nature's intentions, a mechanical, efficient-causal account of nature cannot appropriately ground the unity of species. Hence, I depict Kant's account of natural history as threading a needle between merely mechanical accounts of nature – which are incapable of achieving the goals of the science – and freewheeling, conjectural narratives about the origin and development of the Earth, life, and humanity. In the end, I conclude that my account reveals a substantive role for the faculty of reason in natural history, which dovetails with recent work on Kant's views on the non-physical sciences.

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

The visualization of unknown animals. Aesthetics of natural history in Perrault's Description anatomique , Merian's Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium and Réaumur's History of insects

The visualization of animals in order to categorize their position in the great chain of being was one of the primary interests of natural history in early modern times. According to contemporary opinion, the greatest challenge lay in the precise depiction of animals unknown and those not visible to the naked eye. The focus here will be on a graphic from Claude Perrault's Description anatomique of 1669, the plates and writings of Maria Sibylla Merian from around 1700 and the remarks and pictorial plates from the work of René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, published in the first half of the eighteenth century. These case studies are used to illustrate the way in which natural historians of the early modern period, in their modes of representation, employed an ‘aesthetic of epistemological interest’ in order to transmit the knowledge of animals. Picturing life in the early modern age meant making the simultaneity of various stages, actually only perceived in a temporal sequence, available at a glance. In such a way, knowledge of unknown and invisible animals was conveyed along with that of the naturalist procedures that produced this knowledge.