Natural history

Natural history is the study of nature from a broad, interdisciplinary standpoint. In this context, "history" reflects the word’s roots in the Greek "historia," meaning "learning by inquiry" or "an account of inquiries," a usage that otherwise fell out of fashion as the discipline of history became more rigorous in the wake of the Enlightenment. From Ancient Greece through the Enlightenment in the Western world, the term "natural philosophy" typically covered what in modern science would be considered analysis and reasoning, while the closely related "natural history" contained descriptive knowledge of the natural world, particularly what would come to be called geology and biology. Today, the natural sciences are often broken down into many subfields; natural historians, or, more commonly, naturalists, are those who continue to pursue the wide-ranging perspective of natural history.

Natural history precedes modern biology, but as a contemporary discipline it is distinct from it in that it is principally observational while biology is principally experimental. The work of biologists, for instance, is usually intended for publication in academic journals; that of naturalists, in science magazines. The discipline of ecology is another scientific field that overlaps significantly with natural history as a multidisciplinary study of nature. Their key difference is that ecology is especially concerned with biodiversity, the development of ecosystems, and the interdependence of organisms. Ecology and biology are both descendants of early work in natural history, in some sense, but contemporary natural history and ecology share a common concern for field work and observation, whereas modern biology’s work more often centers on the laboratory.

Naturalists often work for nature centers, which include parks, gardens, and enclosed areas designed to teach people about nature, or natural history museums, which preserve specimens of organisms, sometimes in exhibits recreating their ecosystems, for purposes of educating the public.

Brief History

Until the seventeenth century, the search for knowledge, even at its most rigorous, was primarily driven by observations and collections of observational data, rather than the experimental testing of hypotheses. In this context the study of nature often encompassed all elements of the world, attempting to understand both what was readily visible and what was unknown. Examinations of animals, plants, minerals, and the human body overlapped with more philosophical explorations of religion, meaning, and culture. This observational way of thinking eventually gave rise to the highly interconnected fields of natural philosophy, generally focusing on what today would be considered chemistry and physics, and natural history, generally focusing on what today would be considered geology and biology.

Ancient and medieval thinkers did employ some empirical and rational methods well before the rise of science. The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle developed the basic tools of empiricism and logic. His inductive-deductive method called for a cycle in which inductions drawn from observation were used to hypothesize general principles, from which deductions were made and tested against new observations. This method laid the groundwork for what Muslim philosophers in the Middle Ages and Europeans in the Enlightenment developed into the modern scientific method. The greatest change was the emphasis on experimentation rather than observation. Yet while most sciences grew increasingly specialized and experimental, the tradition of observation lived on in natural history.

Roman writer Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, compiled shortly before his death in 79 CE, is one of the largest surviving works from the Roman Empire and one of the earliest surviving works that could be considered an encyclopedia. Published in thirty-seven books, Natural History showcases the broad scope of its title in presenting information on everything in the world, drawing not only on Pliny’s own observations but also on other works. Though it discusses far more than is considered part of modern natural history (much of it speculative and fantastic), it is nonetheless considered a founding text of the subject, and it influenced Western knowledge of the natural world for centuries. Among the subjects discussed that are recognizable in modern definitions of natural history are zoology, botany, agriculture, geology, and even anthropology.

In Europe, from the medieval era through the Renaissance and even beyond, much of the development of the proto-sciences, including natural history, was done through the church. By the Enlightenment, there was a strong tradition of what historians call parson-naturalists, or members of the clergy who studied the natural sciences. William Turner (1508–1568) was one of the earliest. In his native England, he had a career as both a theologian and a physician, while publishing works of natural history on the birds and plants of England. He was among a wave of scholars who took advantage of the Renaissance’s revitalization of scientific knowledge and a new European interest in the life sciences, after physics, astronomy, and alchemy (as a forerunner to early modern chemistry) had dominated for most of the Middle Ages. Many of the parson-naturalists were influenced by or affiliated with natural theology, the branch of theology that formulates arguments for the existence of God based on reason and observation of the natural world.

In the nineteenth century, several natural historians became highly influential, even as modern science increasingly developed along the path of specialization and favored experimentation over observation. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was one of the best-known English naturalists, and it was his five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle that provided him with the wealth of observational data to inspire his theory of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. The publication of his work was delayed by two decades, in large part because of his work as a geologist; he conceived of natural selection by 1838 but published On the Origin of Species in 1859 after consulting with fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), who had, in the meantime, independently arrived at much the same idea.

Darwin was one of the so-called gentleman scientists, a wealthy person who had the leisure to pursue scientific research without the guiding hand of the church, as in earlier eras, or the auspices of a university, government organization, or private corporation, as in the modern era. These scholars were free to pursue interdisciplinary research as they saw fit, greatly advancing the natural history and its related fields. In this era it was also popular for the wealthy to assemble collections of natural specimens, as well as human artifacts, in so-called cabinets of curiosities; these collections formed the basis for many of the great natural history museums around the world.

Topic Today

In the early twenty-first century, natural history is an often vaguely defined field encompassing virtually any aspect of the study of nature, especially organisms. Many modern naturalists specialize in a narrower field. Others, however, continue to follow the broad-minded, cross-disciplinary nature that has long characterized natural history.

For these naturalists, nature writing is one of the primary outlets for their work. Nature writing can include anything from poetry to travel writing, but perhaps its classic form is the first-person narrative. In this it differs from most scientific writing, which generally only adopts a technical first-person perspective for the sake of certain necessities such as explaining experimental procedures or making important disclosures about the authors. The modern genre of the first-person nature writing narrative is the direct descendant of earlier works in natural history, including those of the parson-naturalists and the gentlemen scientists. Contemporary work by natural historians often focus on the relationship between humans and nature, as demonstrated by observations recounted in the first-person narrative.

While researchers in various branches of the natural sciences are often concerned with environmental issues, there is particular overlap between naturalists and the conservation movement, in part because of natural history’s emphasis on field work and the historic ties between the two fields. The conservation movement focuses on the conservation and protection of ecosystems and biodiversity, seeking to develop sustainable solutions for the use of natural resources. Nineteenth-century naturalists were responsible for developing this perspective, along with other branches of environmentalism, and their successors have carried on that legacy. For example, the book Silent Spring (1962) by naturalist Rachel Carson (1907–1964) portrayed the effects of pesticides on ecosystems and became one of the most influential works of environmental science writing of all time.

Perhaps the realm in which natural history is most familiar to the majority of people is that of the natural history museum. Many of these institutions, including Britain’s Natural History Museum, were among the first types of public museums and grew out of the great specimen collections of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The United States has many prominent museums of natural history, including the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, one of the museums run by the Smithsonian Institution and open to the public for free. It is among the most-visited museums of any kind in the United States and the world. Opened in 1910, it was constructed to house some of the Smithsonian’s national collections, originally as the Natural History Building of what was then known as the National Museum. The permanent exhibits reflect the wide range of subjects that fall under the umbrella of natural history, with displays on geology, gems, and minerals; human origins; paleontology; and animals and plants of all kinds. Like other branches of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum shows numerous temporary exhibitions, drawing on its vast collections as well as hosting touring exhibitions.

The Peabody Museum of Natural History, at Yale University, is one of the oldest natural history museums in the world, having been established by philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 to house Yale’s growing collection of natural history specimens and encourage its continued enlargement. Peabody’s nephew was Othniel Charles Marsh, a well-known paleontologist whose rivalry with fellow paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope is known as the Bone Wars. For decades, Marsh and Cope’s teams competed to find the best and most significant dinosaur fossils in the American West. While the rivalry produced numerous specimens—many of which were sent by Marsh’s team to the Peabody Museum—and advanced the understanding of dinosaurs, the personal animosity between the two men was so great that they regularly sabotaged each other’s dig sites, destroying priceless scientific discoveries in the process. It was at Marsh’s urging that Peabody funded the museum at Marsh’s alma mater, as his nephew’s patron. Naturally, the museum specializes in paleontology and fossil collections, but it also has one of the most extensive ornithology collections in the world and one of the most significant collections of marine invertebrates.

In addition to important national and private museums, natural history is advanced today by numerous professional and amateur societies, which may operate at anywhere from the local to the global level. Natural history societies maintain observational records of plant and animal life (and in some cases geological features) for a given country, region, or town. There is a strong British tradition of such societies growing out of the era of gentlemen scientists, and historically often participated in by civil servants with an amateur interest in natural history. In the United States, the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) was founded in 1883 and is one of the oldest American societies devoted to the life sciences. The ASN publishes a scientific journal and funds several awards for excellence in natural history and the biological sciences.

Bibliography

Buchmann, Stephen L. The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives. New York: Scribner, 2016.

Graham, Michael H., Joan Parker, and Paul K. Dayton, eds. The Essential Naturalist: Timeless Readings in Natural History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011.

Jacob, Margaret C. The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

Leroi, Armand Marie. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. New York: Viking, 2014.

Nicholls, Henry. The Galapagos: A Natural History. New York: Basic, 2014.

Pitts, Gill editor. Natural History. 2nd ed., DK Publishing, 2021.

Tomlinson, Susan Leigh. How to Keep a Naturalist’s Notebook. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2010.

Weinberg, Steven. To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science. New York: Harper, 2015.

Wootton, David. The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper, 2015.