Natural History Article

There may be no more appropriate pairing than a science collector and the field of natural history. After all, it was natural historians who made a science out of collecting.

The field developed out of a desire to categorize and arrange the different types of animals, plants, and minerals. For Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks, the goal was to make sense of diversity. It was not until the 18th century and naturalists such as Carolus Linnaeus that a more concrete system was proposed. Linnaeus favored the Great Chain of Being, the scala naturae, on which some life forms ranked lower, while others (like man) ranked higher and were considered more “perfect.” Across geology, botany, zoology, and other sciences, taxonomy flourished.

In the 19th century, the gentleman naturalists gave way to the great scientists such as Darwin, Huxley, and Hooker. While previously the amazing adaptability of creatures had been credited to God and explored through natural theology, the theories of natural selection and evolution as articulated in Origin of Species and Darwin's other works began to take over the scientific discourse.

With evolution, the field expanded. Ecology, ethology, and evolutionary biology all became important branches of science. In a world in which all things were related, the relationships began to matter. Biology and genetics flourished. What began with Gregor Mendel and his rediscovery at the beginning of the 20th century through Punnett's Mendelism and Bateson's Mendel's Principles of Heredity grew into a fascination with genetics and the building blocks of life. By the 1950s, a race was underway to uncover the structure of life itself, culminating in Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and its announcement in the journal, Nature. Through genetics, the study of what life had been in times past morphed into the study of what life could be.

As people learned more about the living world, activists such as Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, changed the conception of what natural history was meant to be and its application to the cause of environmentalism. Scientists challenged the public to consider the consequences of their actions on life that had been considered “lower” just 200 years before. By Al Gore's 2006 book, An Inconvenient Truth, all of the hard work of the natural historians had truly begun to reach laymen.

Yet, perhaps what distinguishes natural history from other collecting areas is the special treasures it offers. It is perhaps the only scientific field in which illustration transitions fluidly into art. The meticulous cataloguing of the early taxonomists inspired some artistically inclined naturalists to produce special types of books, among them the great flower and bird books. Composed of vibrantly hand-colored plates, these books attempted to accurately and scientifically portray their subjects for both education and enjoyment. Though Audubon's Birds and Quadrupeds are the best known examples of the genre, there are a wealth of other color-plate books on a variety of nature-related subjects, to suit every collecting interest. They remain uniquely valuable for both their artistic beauty and scientific importance, wonderful additions to any natural history library.