History Of Natural Sciences Research Articles

Періодизація природничої музеології у контексті історії природознавства Європи

Періодизація природничої музеології у контексті історії природознавства Європи

Studies of the World History Problems as an Important Factor in the Development of National Historical Science (Based on the Materials of the “Ukrainian Historical Journal”)

Studies of the World History Problems as an Important Factor in the Development of National Historical Science (Based on the Materials of the “Ukrainian Historical Journal”)

PROSPECTS FOR REPRESENTATION IN SCREEN MEDIA HISTORY

The article is devoted to an actual problem, interdisciplinary approaches in historical research. There is noted a role of various ways of the audiovisual fixation in reality such as the Visual Studies and Digital Humanities, actively developing multidisciplinary approaches to gender and micro-history, visual anthropology, history of everyday life and other areas of modern social practices. The goal is the development of these areas in the national historical science. Realization of this goal is possible through the recognition of the importance of the scientific community in the process of rekonst-struction history not only newsreels, but the game of cinema, capable of convincingly testify historicized time-symmetric. It raises questions about the need to introduce into the curricula of training historians subjects of cultural and film profile.

Cook-Voyage Collections of ‘Artificial Curiosities’ in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015Endeavouring Banks. Exploring collections from the Endeavour voyage 1768–1771

James Cook set sail for the Pacific Ocean in 1768 on a three-year voyage of discovery. Here are two books paving the way towards the 250th anniversary of his departure when at least two major exhibitions are planned to celebrate it, in which the emphases are likely to fall (as they do here) on the collections of artificial curiosities rather than the natural specimens. Then as now, the public appetite for exotic artefacts outstripped any general interest in plants and shells, while fish, insects and animals attracted attention as amazing nondescripts – such as the platypus and the kangaroo from Australia – but had short shelf-lives as preserved specimens. In the eighteenth century the emerging science of natural history was held in particular esteem among the learned, newly equipped with means of classifying its specimens, while the taste for curiosities, such as coral formed in the shape of a hand, came to be associated with the indiscriminate accumulations of the Wunderkammern of European princes and the amateur antiquarianism of English gentlemen. These latter collections lacked any system of scientific order and were regarded as largely frivolous in the generation of new knowledge – except among those easy enough to seek no more from their collections than amusement and, of course, a public always eager to marvel at strange things.

The Rhinoceros and the Chatham Railway: Taxidermy and the Production of Animal Presence in the ‘Great Indoors’

AbstractThis article considers the practice of taxidermy and its relationship to the ‘golden age’ of big game hunting, the science of natural history and the dramaturgical codes of empire by looking at the collecting exploits of one man, Major Percy Powell‐Cotton (1866–1940), and his attempts to preserve the spoils of the hunt in the ‘great indoors’. As various scholars have pointed out, taxidermy offers up a vivid and striking ‘afterlife’ of the animal with a unique (and some might say unsavoury) ability to elucidate our environmental and cultural relations with other species. As such, the reanimated animals of empire, posed on the walls of the country estate or arrested in museum cases, represent valuable historical artefacts ripe for unstitching. Drawing on the work of Garry Marvin, Sam Alberti and Merle Patchett, this article stalks Powell‐Cotton's taxidermic project across various sites of capture, production and display (what I call necrogeographies) to illuminate the sinuous contours of imperial natural history and the stories of pursuit, production and performance lurking beneath the skin of the reanimated animal.

THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE MIRROR OF CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

The article deals with the evolution of Western theories of international relations in the postSoviet Russia, it analyzes the world view of Russian international scholars, as well as their reflection on the epistemological foundations of the probable Russian IR school. It states that pluralization of theoretical approaches continues in Russia, while liberalism is gradually givingup to realism on the way to the dominant theory. Constructivism is gaining popularity and postmodernism remains without followers. Russian international studies are structured by a long-standing debate about the identity of Russia. "Westerners" continue to argue with "Slavophiles."Sometimes these arguments translate into a cry for building independent national school of international relations, thereby exacerbating the problem of epistemological relativism. The bases for the school may be found in Russian spiritual philosophy, the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, Russian cultural studies, postcolonial tradition of national historical science.

What Should the History of Ancient Ukraine Be Like?

This article analyzes problems and perspectives of the national historical science in the question of studying ancient Ukrainian history. The author considers that the writing of a new, scientifically credible Ukrainian history of the ancient period is one of the most topical and socially significant tasks of the national historical science and Ukrainian studies at the modern stage.

PLOTKIN SEMEN YAKOVLEVICH (TO THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY)

The article tells about life and fate of S.Ya. Plotkin, whose 110-th anniversary of birth was marked on March 2016. He was born in 1906 in Melitopole town (Ukraine). Having graduated at the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology in 1931, he was asked for administration works firstly as the director of the Institute and then as the member of the All-Union Committee for High School problems. During all his life S.Ya. Plotkin successfully combine administrative, scientific, pedagogical and journalistic activities. He was the expert in the problems of hard alloys and powder metallurgy, professor, editor in chief of the journal «History of Natural Sciences and Technique». He was the member of the Journalist’s Union of the USSR, Honorary member of the International Institute for the Sciences of Sintering and Honorary worker of Culture of Russian Federation.

Natural History Today

In the era of ecological transformations that are unprecedented in human history-especially the complex phenomena that have been grouped under the titles climatic change and sixth extinction-it has become necessary to ask what the place of in history is. Does have a history? How does interfere in human history? What is the place of in the philosophy of history? Despite their simplicity, these questions have received so little attention in the philosophy of history that one needs to start by posing them; and this can only be done after two digressions that show (1) the absence of in the philosophy of history and (2) the sketch of history in natural sciences.1.Absence of Nature in Philosophy of HistoryWhen the philosophy of history was born in the aftermath of Kant and Herder, reaching its first complete formulation in Hegel's system, it was born as the question of the rationality of human history, and it was explicitly opposed to nature. Hegel thought that in nature, spirit was alienated,1 because reason was not conscious of itself, and although he did not elaborate the question specifically, this also explains why in time is just the pure punctual negativity,2 meaningless repetition of ever the same forms, and not history. Hegel's great philosophical innovation was the historiality of the spirit-but he let fall outside of spirit and history. After Hegel, the philosophy of history was to develop in many regards, but the exclusion of from history has remained intact practically until our days; only Schelling has described an originary temporalization of that makes natural evolution metaphysically possible-but he came too early to think its realization as a concrete evolution of species. For instance, Marx, who ambitioned to turn Hegel's philosophy around so that it would at last walk its feet and not on its head claimed to study history from a materialist point of view instead of a spiritualist one, but as by material conditions of humanity he mainly understood technological progress and class relations; his materialism really refers to a cultural substructure rather than to any wild domain that deserves the name of nature In this regard, Marxism continues the Baconian program of man's mastery over nature: there is a history of man's mastery of nature, but not of itself.The subsequent history of German Idealist conceptions of history is well known, but it is better understood if it is related to the question that animates them. Since Kant,3 and much more thoroughly since Hegel and Marx, the whole project of a philosophy of history was born as a question concerning reason. Modernity as a whole had challenged the ancient idea of a transcendent reason (idea beyond reality, creator beyond world) by seeking reason in the concrete world itself. Descartes found reason in human thoughts. Since Francis Bacon, philosophy strove to discover reason in nature, and in becoming experimental science it found an impressive amount of natural laws-but as long as law was understood as certainty that can be calculated mathematically, reason in was timeless and without history. The Enlightenment sought to find reason in human existence and society, and by following this impulsion German idealism ended by seeking reason in human history as well. Finding reason in human reality has always seemed to be much more difficult than finding it in because of the particularly human way of freely choosing unreason and evil: while lacks reason, humanity goes willingly against the reason that it has. This is why, as both Kant and Hegel show, reason cannot be found in history without explaining the evident unreason of history as disguised reason. Pain, suffering, backwardness, contradiction, injustice . . . all forms of evil are certainly contrary to individual reason but they may still be means of the absolute spirit.4 But how to recognize reason in the unreasonable fabric of reality? …

Wychowanie na lekcjach przedmiotów przyrodniczych i techniki

W kanonie edukacji od zawsze było miejsce na uczenie przyrody. Przedmiot ten służy nam jako narzędzie do opisywania wszechświata jak również roli i miejsca człowieka w świecie. Zgłębianie tej wiedzy zaspokaja naturalną ciekawość człowieka dotyczącą otaczającego go świata. W dzisiejszych czasach przyrodoznawstwo i nauki techniczne dążą nie tylko do przekazania uczniom podstawowej wiedzy. Ich zadaniem jest również osiągnięcie różnych celów dydaktycznych, takich jak: rozwijanie pożądanych postaw, zainteresowań, cech charakteru, poczucia odpowiedzialności i wpajanie określonych wartości. Jedynie dobór odpowiednich metod nauczania, które umożliwiają uczniom aktywne zaangażowanie się w rozwiązywanie problemów edukacyjnych, podejmowanie indywidualnej inicjatywy, zgłębianie przedmiotu, dostrzeganie wartości pracy oraz docenianie osiągnięć naukowych, może przyczynić się do pełnego obrazu wartości edukacyjnych, ich zrozumienia i przyswojenia. Poznanie historii nauk przyrodniczych, techniki oraz biografii naukowców i wynalazców powinno skłonić uczniów do głębszej refleksji na temat roli człowieka w powiększeniu i udoskonaleniu historycznych osiągnięć kultury i cywilizacji, znaczenia poświęcenia, pasji i nieustępliwości w dążeniu do celu.

Contacts in natural sciences between Riga and England in 1660–1710 [Loodusteaduslikud kontaktid Riia ja Inglismaa vahel 1660–1710

London became one of the most important centres for the natural sciences in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The sphere of influence of the Royal Society of London, as well as that of the first natural scientific periodical, the Philosophical Transactions, covered all of Europe through a network of fellows of the Society and of contributors to the periodical. This article examines the mutual contacts between persons interested in natural sciences in England as the centre of natural science and Riga as the centre of one of Europe’s peripheral regions. The main characters under scrutiny are Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau (1618–88) and David Krieg (about 1669–1710). Riga’s municipal physician Witte corresponded and exchanged books and objects with the treasurer of the Royal Society, Abraham Hill (1633–1721). Krieg, a doctor of German descent working in Riga, spent an entire year in England in the company of England’s naturalists, and went to the American colonies in 1698 to collect specimens of natural history. In 1699 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and corresponded until 1708 with the secretary of the Royal Society Hans Sloane and the collectionnaire James Petiver. Also, several doctoral candidates from Riga who ventured out on academic peregrinations after completing their university studies visited London. KEYWORDS: History of natural sciences, Royal Society of London, Philosophical Transactions, David Krieg, Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau, Riga

Entre la literatura i la divulgació científica: les novel·les de Martí Domínguez

Marti Dominguez (1966) is a biologist, writer and journalist, the author of novels, essays, and press articles. In his novels Les confidencies del comte de Buffon (1997) and El secret de Goethe (1999), he presents two great personalities of 18th century Europe and a scientific and cultural context of their lives and works. These novels contain information about debates, ideas, and theories related to the development of science (especially the natural sciences) in the Age of Enlightenment. In the article we study the narrative strategies used by the author in order to present issues regarding the history of natural sciences in modern Europe.

The Business of Natural History

Charles Aiken was a Colorado ornithologist and specimen dealer whose career spanned almost sixty years, roughly 1870–1930. He was an entrepreneurial naturalist who operated a long-running commercial natural history dealership in Colorado Springs, which enabled him to pursue his passion for birds and make important contributions to American ornithology. Definitive studies of Colorado and Rocky Mountain avifauna were based on his personal specimen collection and extensive residential knowledge. However, his contributions to ornithology have largely been forgotten, highlighting the fact that collectors like Aiken were “invisible technicians.” This article examines the importance of specimen dealers to the science of natural history, suggesting that the tools we use to examine the careers of scientists can also be useful in understanding those commercial collectors who provided scientists with the materials they needed to produce scientific knowledge. The first half follows Aiken’s career from his early training in natural history through to the operation of his natural history dealership. The second half considers Aiken’s contributions to American ornithology, providing insight into the social and scientific status of collectors in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America. I consider whether specimen dealers are best classified as amateurs, professionals, or scientists. I also examine the tensions engendered by collectors’ commercial practices, and how scientific publication acted as a boundary between collectors and those scientists who used their specimens in the production of knowledge.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCHES ABOUT PROBLEMS OF THE POLITICAL EDUCATION IN THE RANKS OF THE SOVIET ARMY PERSONNEL THROUGH PRISM OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 90S OF THE 20 CENTURY

Goal: Reporting of study results about increment dynamics of the historical knowledge about the issue of the political education of Soviet Army servicemen 1941-1945 in the national historical science. Research Methodology: study was carried out in problem-chronological manner, using both traditional and innovative methods of studying the historical and historiographical narrative material. Results: the main results of the study is detection of the distinguishing characteristics in the analyzed historiographical stage. Area of application of the results: research results can be used for integrated historiographical researches about political education of the USSR Armed Forces personnel, as well as for research in other branches of the military history.

Contingency, Nature and Hermeneutics in History of Science

When, as historians, we want to explain developments in the history of natural science, how are we to do justice to the role of the natural world – the thing scientists investigate – in our explanations? The idea that the structure of the natural world renders the development of science inevitable seems to be inadequate, but so does the idea that we should explain the history of science without any reference to nature, as if what scientists study made no difference at all to what they believe. Is ‘nature’ even a feasible category, however? To what extent is it a problem that in referring to the result of scientific development in our explanation of scientific development, we are assuming the authority of science? Does this undermine the possibility of critical and independent historiography? This article deals with several possible solutions to these problems, and outlines an alternative to rationalism as well as to the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Latour’s Actor-Network Theory.

The plants by Daniel Rolander (c. 1723–1793) in Diarium Surinamicum (1754–1765) and herbaria<p class="HeadingRunIn" align="center"><br />

The manuscripts of Diarium Surinamicum by Daniel Rolander practically remained ignored and unpublished for over 240 years, till the recent publication of its translation into English, which occurred in 2008. In this, the names of species described and/or cited by Rolander were faithfully retained, hence preserving the indication of them without authorship, for the vast majority. In the present work, all the names of plants that were treated by Rolander in his journal, about 664, including by tradition the fungi and algae, are contextualised in relation to the authorship, reference to the publication of the protologue, pagination of citations/descriptions in the manuscripts and in the published translation, indication of probable misidentifications with possible alternative names, vernacular names, and related literature. Additionally, we searched for the vouchers collected by Rolander, scattered in several herbaria, which have been linked to the probable names and descriptions in the diary. Given the considerable time till the publication of these names, and by the lack of indication of their nomenclatural types in the English version, the great majority of the new species described by Rolander, which would have priority if published in due time, became invalid names according to the ICN. Nevertheless, the list of Rolandrian species here presented, from his work that has finally taken a place in the history of natural sciences, shows that he was also a competent botanist, besides being a skilled entomologist, having recognised and detailedly described many of the Surinamese plants hitherto unknown to science.

Scientific Natural History: Telling the Epics of Nature

Scientific natural history, which addresses all biological aspects of individual species, one species at a time, then compares many together, is as important to science as any of the umbrella biological disciplines. With most species yet undiscovered and the vast majority of those known yet unstudied, most biological phenomena are probably also unknown and unimagined. Closing this gap calls for a renewed emphasis on the disciplines of the taxonomic -ologies, treating each species as an evolutionary epic, summoning information from all of the umbrella disciplines. We argue from the example of the once-obscure red fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, whose economic importance made it a model species for research on the superorganism, offering excellent opportunities for addressing many profound questions about superorganism organization, function, development, and ecology. Had scientific natural history been properly emphasized in recent research, theory testing in areas such as competition and kin-based selection would not have led to decades of distraction.

Winter diet of the stone marten (Martes foina) in central Bulgaria

1 Carnivore Ecology and Conservation Research Group, Graduate School of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Saiwaicho 3-5-8, Fuchu, Tokyo 183-8509, Japan 2 Agricultural Faculty, Trakia University, Student’s Campus, 6000 Stara Zagora, Bulgaria 3 Research Center for Wildlife Management, Gifu University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1193, Japan 4 Department of Natural History Sciences, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan

EScience and the need for data standards in the life sciences: in pursuit of objectivity rather than truth

Referring to European history of natural sciences as an example, I discuss the relation between development of standards and the emergence of new epistemic virtues. I distinguish standards relating to scientific argumentation from standards relating to data production. The former are based on truth-seeking epistemic virtues and use criteria of logical coherence and empirical grounding. They are important for the justification of an explanatory hypothesis. Data and metadata standards, on the other hand, concern the data record itself and all steps and actions taken during data production and are based on virtues of objectivity. In the second part I focus on data and metadata standards and argue that, in order to meet the requirements of eScience, the specification of the currently popular minimum information checklists should be complemented to cover four aspects: (i) content standards, which increase reproducibility and operational transparency of data production, (ii) concept standards, which increase the semantic transparency of the terms used in data records, (iii) nomenclatural standards, which provide stable and unambiguous links between the terms used and their underlying definitions or their real referents, and (iv) format standards, which increase compatibility and computer-parsability of data records. I discuss the role of scientific terminology for standardizing data and the need for using semantically standardized and formalized data-reporting languages in the form of controlled vocabularies and ontologies for establishing content standards for data in the life sciences. Finally I comment on the necessity of community participation in the development and application of standards and in making data openly available.

Editorial

Editorial