Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson(Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science)

Since natural history emerged in the middle of the 18th century, it has been at the heart of the life sciences. It gave rise to the major organizing theory of life - evolution - and continues to be a vital science with impressive practical value. Central to ecology, agriculture, medicine and environmental science, natural history attracts enormous popular interest. In this work, Paul Farber traces the development of the naturalist tradition since the 18th century and considers its relationship to other research areas in the life sciences. Written for the general reader and student alike, the volume explores the adventures of early naturalists, the ideas that lay behind classification systems, the development of museums and zoos, and the range of motives that led collectors to collect. Farber also explores the importance of sociocultural contexts, institutional settings, and government funding in the story of this durable discipline.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Collecting, Classifying, and Interpreting Nature: Linnaeus and Buffon, 1735–1788 Chapter 2. New Specimens: Transforming Natural History into a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1840 Chapter 3. Comparing Structure: The Key to the Order of Nature, 1789–1848 Chapter 4. New Tools and Standard Practices, 1840–1859 Chapter 5. Darwin's Synthesis: The Theory of Evolution,1830–1882 Chapter 6. Studying Function: An Alternative Vision for the Science of Life, 1809–1900 Chapter 7. Victorian Fascination: The Golden Age of Natural History, 1880–1900 Chapter 8. New Synthesis: The Modern Theory of Evolution, 1900–1950 Chapter 9. The Naturalist as Generalist: E. O. Wilson, 1950–1994 Epilogue Suggested Further Reading Index

About the Author :
Paul Lawrence Farber is the Oregon State University Distinguished Professor of History of Science and chair of the Department of History at Oregon State University.

Review :
The history of natural history can rarely have been as succinctly told as in Paul Lawrence Farber's 129-page Finding Order in Nature. From the intellectual revolutions of Linnaeus and Darwin through the Victorian obsessions with classifying and collecting, to the conservationists led by E. O. Wilson, it is an odyssey beautifully told. New Scientist Farber artfully compresses into one small, engaging volume the span of natural history as a field of study from its beginnings in the 18th century to the present day... What results is truly an introduction to the subject... a concise work that gives the general reader a solid understanding. Library Journal Farber does an impressive job of demonstrating how practitioners like Linnaeus, Buffon, Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier advanced the field and set the stage for the development of science as we know it today... [An] estimable volume. Publishers Weekly Broadly charts the intellectual, epistemological, aesthetic, and cultural work of the naturalist tradition-from the great eighteenth-century systematic nomenclators Linnaeus and Buffon, through the nineteenth-century evolutionary theorists Darwin and Wallace, to contemporary American entomologist Edward O. Wilson. It reflects a generalist sensibility and is valuable precisely because its scope is broad and its story compelling. -- Michael P. Branch Isle