edited by N. Jardine, J.A. Secord, and E.C. Spary.
New York :
Cambridge University Press,
1996.
xxi, 501 pages :
illustrations, maps ;
26 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 460-494) and index.
The natures of cultural history / Nicholas Jardine and Emma Spary -- Emblematic natural history of the Renaissance / William B. Ashworth, Jr. -- The culture of gardens / Andrew Cunningham -- Courting nature / Paula Findlen -- The culture of curiosity / Katie Whitaker -- Physicians and natural history / Harold J. Cook -- Natural history as print culture / Adrian Johns -- Natural history in the academies / Daniel Roche -- Carl Linnaeus in his time and place / Lisbet Koerner -- Gender and natural history / Londa Schiebinger -- Political, natural and bodily economies / Emma Spary -- The science of man / Paul B. Wood -- The natural history of the earth / Martin Guntau -- Naturphilosophie and the kingdoms of nature / Nicholas Jardine -- New spaces in natural history / Dorinda Outram -- Minerals, strata and fossils / Martin Rudwick -- Humboldtian science / Michael Dettelbach -- Biogeography and empire / Janet Browne -- Travelling the other way / Gillian Beer -- Ethnological encounters / Michael T. Bravo -- Equipment for the field / Anne Larsen -- Artisan botany / Anne Secord -- Tastes and crazes / David Allen -- Nature for the people / Jean-Marc Drouin and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent -- Natural history and the 'new' biology / Lynn K. Nyhart -- The crisis of nature / James A. Secord.
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This copiously illustrated volume is the first systematic general work to do justice to the fruits of recent scholarship in the history of natural history. Public interest in this lively field has been stimulated by environmental concerns and through links with the histories of art, collecting and gardening. The centrality of the development of natural history for other branches of history - medical, colonial, gender, economic, ecological - is increasingly recognized. Twenty-four specially commissioned essays cover the period from the sixteenth century, when the first institutions of natural history were created, to its late nineteenth-century transformation by practitioners of the new biological sciences. An introduction discusses novel approaches that have made this a major focus for research in cultural history. The essays, which include suggestions for further reading, offer a coherent and accessible overview of a fascinating subject. An epilogue highlights the relevance of this wide-ranging survey for current debates on museum practice, the display of ecological diversity and concerns about the environment.