Promotional Information

In this exciting and innovative book, Paul Farber provides a sweeping synthesis of the development of natural history over the previous two and a half centuries. Anyone hoping to come to terms with the meaning and place of natural history in the modern world will definitely want to start with this book. -- Mark V. Barrow, Jr., Virginia Tech

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.

Reviews

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

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

Farber, professor of the history of science at Oregon State University, examines the almost three-century-long tradition of natural history in this slim book, part of the Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science series. Natural history, according to Farber, falls between "folk biology" and mainstream science. "What distinguishes natural history from the `folk biology' of earlier studies is the attempt of naturalists to group animals, plants and minerals according to shared underlying features and to use rational, systematic methods to bring order to the otherwise overwhelming variation found in nature." What distinguishes it from contemporary science is the latter's reliance on experimentation. 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. Also discussed are the roles played by newly developed natural history museums, botanical gardens and zoological parks in both the scientific enterprise and in galvanizing public opinion about the importance of the natural world. The great showman P.T. Barnum, although more flamboyant than those heading the world's leading state-run institutions, played a similar role in attracting the public to natural curiosities, according to Farber in this estimable volume. 15 halftones and 7 line drawings. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.