Abstract
To better appreciate the change that took place in less than a century in the study of birds we might contrast the two works that commenced this study with the one that concluded it. The differences between ornithology in the second half of the eighteenth century and ornithology in the middle of the nineteenth century are, indeed, well exemplified by comparing Brisson’s Ornithologie (1760) and Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (1770–1783) with Bonaparte’s Conspectus generum avium (1850).
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Notes
Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Conspectus generum avium, Leyden, Brill, 1850–1857, vol. 1, p.i.
Foucault, Les mots et les choses, p. 139. I have quoted from the English translation, Michael Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archeology of the Human Sciences, London, Tavistock, 1970, pp. 127–128. It should be noted that Foucaut’s ideas have been in flux. I am describing his ideas as expressed in Les mots et les choses. This choice is not arbitrary, but rather it is due to the continuing influence that book has had on historians.
For a recent example see Stephen Cross, “John Hunter, the Animal Oeconomy, and Late Eighteenth-Century Physiological Discourse”, Studies in History of Biology, 1981, 5:1–110. Foucault’s characterization of the changes in natural history is very broad and contains elements of both of the interpretations of the history of natural history referred to in the Introduction (i.e., a replacement of natural history by “biology”, and a new temporal dimension in the conception of nature).
Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 74.
Ibid., p. 217.
See my “Research Traditions in Eighteenth-Century Natural History”.
The history of the emergence of comparative anatomy as a scientific discipline has yet to be written. Some elements of the story are in Bernard Balan, L’Ordre et le temps. L’Anatomie Comparée et l’histoire des vivants au XIX e siècle, Paris, Vrin, 1979.
Daubenton was Buffon’s collaborator on the first section of the Histoire naturelle. He did not, however, provide anatomical studies of each species of bird for the Histoire naturelle des oiseaux as he had for each of the species of the quadrupeds in the preceding section of the Histoire naturelle. See my “Buffon and Daubenton: Divergent Traditions within the Histoire naturelle”, Isis, 1975, 66(231):63–74.
Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 3.
Lynn Barber, The Heyday of Natural History 1820–1870, London, Jonathan Cape, 1980 raises the issue but only superficially treats it.
A good introduction to the literature on this subject is in the notes to Nathan Reingold, “Definitions and Speculations: the Professionalization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century”, in Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Grown (eds.), The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic. American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, pp. 33–69.
Ibid.
Reingold has often cautioned against oversimplification of the historical record. See, for example, his article, “National Aspirations and Local Purposes”, Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 1968, 71(3): 235–246.
Ibid., p. 236.
Maurice Crosland, “The Development of a Professional Career in Science in France”, in Maurice Crosland (ed.), The Emergence of Science in Western Europe, New York, Science History Publications, 1976, pp. 154–155.
Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society. A Comparative Study, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1971.
Roger Hahn suggests how complicated an understanding of the story is for France in his “Scientific Careers in Eighteenth-Century France”, in Maurice Crosland (ed.), The Emergence of Science in Western Europe, New York, Science History Publications, 1976, pp. 127–138. Also see Robert Fox, “Scientific Enterprise and the Patronage of Research in France 1800–1870”, Minerva, 1973, 11(4):442–473.
and Dorinda Outram, “Politics and Vocation: French Science, 1793–1830”, British Journal for the History of Science, 1980, 13:27–43.
W. J. Reader, Professional Men. The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966, p. 147.
See George Daniels, “The Process of Professionalization in American Science: the Emergent Period, 1820–1860”, Isis, 1967, 58(192): 151–166.
and Geoffrey Millerson, The Qualifying Associations. A Study in Professionalization, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964.
See, for example, Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “The Contribution of the Amateur to North American Ornithology: a Historical Perspective”, The Living Bird, 1979–80, 18:161–177, and Allen, The Naturalist in Britain.
See Susan Faye Cannon, Science in Culture.
Roy Porter, “Gentlemen and Geology: the Emergence of a Scientific Career, 1660–1920”, The Historical Journal, 1978, 21(4):810. Unfortunately Porter confines himself to British geologists, and it is not clear that one can generalize from it.
See quotation cited in chapter seven.
Stephen Toulmin gives a detailed discussion on the philosophic differences in his Human Understanding, Princeton, Princeton University, 1972.
Everett Mendelsohn, “The Emergence of Science as a Profession in Nineteenth-Century Europe”, in Karl Hill (ed.), The Management of Scientists, Boston, Beacon Press, 1964, pp. 40–41.
Levaillant, Histoire naturelle des Perroquets, Vol. 1, p. i.
William MacLeay, Horae Entornologicae; or Essays on the Annulose Animals, London, Bagster, 1819, p. vi.
Jenyns, “Some Remarks on the Study of Zoology”, (1839), p. 26.
See Sheets-Pyenson, “War and Peace in Natural History Publishing”, pp. 71–72. Jardine did a total of fifteen of the entire forty volume set.
[Isidore de Salles], Histoire naturelle drolatique et philosophique des Professeurs du Jardin des plantes, des aides-naturalistes, préparateurs, etc., attachés à cet établissement, accompagnée d’épisodes scientifiques et pittoresques, par Isid. S. de Gosse. Avec des annotations de Frédérick Gérard, Paris, Sandré, 1847, p. 150. Berthold Schwarz was an alleged inventor of gunpowder in the middle ages. Robert Macaire was a villain in a popular melodrama of the period, and was the prototype for a series of lithographs by Honoré Daumier which depicted thievery of various sorts.
Buffon, HNO, Vol. 2, p. 523.
George Edwards, A Natural History of Birds, London, Printed for the author, 1743–1751, Vol. 4, p. ii.
See Cannon, Science and Culture, p. 3.
See Cannon, Science and Culture which also contains valuable bibliographical information. David Hull has attempted to give a philosophical analysis of the Victorian philosophy of science in his Darwin and His Critics, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1973.
See, for example, John Frederick Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1830.
“Introduction”, Annales des sciences naturelles, 1824, 1:ix.
Neville Wood, The Ornithologist’s Text-Book. Being Reviews of Ornithological Works; with an Appendix, Containing Discussions on Various Topics of Interest, London, John Parker, 1836, p. 153.
Herbert, “The Place of Man in the Development of Darwin’s Theory”, p. 244.
David Kohn, “Theories to Work By: Rejected Theories, Reproduction, and Darwin’s Path to Natural Selection”, Studies in History of Biology, 1980, 4:73.
Francis Darwin (ed), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, New York, Appleton and Co., 1896, Vol. 1, pp. 315–316.
There have been some excellent studies of Darwin’s reception in individual countries, however, not much has been written of a comparative nature except for Thomas Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1974. Yvette Conry in her L’introduction du Darwinisme en France au XIX e siècle, Paris, Vrin, 1974 does a good job of examining the lack of response to Darwin in France.
Newton, A Dictionary of Birds, p. 79.
See Conry, L’introduction du Darwinisme and Joseph Schiller, Claude Bernard et les problèmes scientifiques de son temps, Paris, Les Editions du Cèdre, 1967.
Richard French has shown a subtle effect on British physiology in his “Darwin and the Physiologists, or the Medusa and Modern Cardiology”, Journal of the History of Biology, 1970, 3(2):253–274.
A notable exception is Lucile Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion. The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens, New York, Academic Press, 1979.
Ibid., p. 39.
For a good description of the biological significance of the early contacts of Europeans with the New World see Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian Exchange. Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1972.
Morris Berman in Social Change and Scientific Organization discusses the significance of the discovery in the context of gaining support for science in nineteenth-century Britain.
See S. Peter Dance, “Hugh Cuming (1791–1865) Prince of Collectors”, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1980, 9(4): 477–501.
For an interesting discussion of the complexity of these changes and their relationship to the social and economic events of the period see Fritz Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979.
See Joseph Fay et, La Révolution française et la science, Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1960, pp. 110–119.
Allen, The Naturalist in Britain, has a good discussion on this subject for the British example.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 75.
Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 4th ed., London, Charles Knight, 1835, p. 386.
See Arnold Thackray, “Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: the Manchester Model”, The American Historical Review, 1974, 79(3):672–709.
Ibid., pp. 674–675.
Ibid., p. 693.
George Johnston, “Address to the Members of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club”, History of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club, 1834, p. 11.
Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, p. 379.
“The Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science. New Series”, n.p., n.p., n.d., p. 1.
Ibid., p. 2.
See Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965.
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Farber, P.L. (1982). The Significance of the Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline. In: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760–1850. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7819-5_8
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