Natural History Collecting
The European fashion for novelty and exploration, tied to expanding trade, markets, and empire, was augmented by a growing consumer culture for wonders of nature. Not all objects needed to be of practical utility or trade goods -- or rather, their exotic or wondrous nature could transform them into trade goods for a consumer culture. The possession of a rich collection of natural objects became a mark of status, of wealth, and of interests in the wider world. This Wunderkammer (room of wonders, or "cabinet of curiosities" as it was often called in English) is from the Dell'Historia Naturale (1599) by the Neapolitan apothecary Ferrante Imperato. It shows us the social positioning of collections, ownership, and increasingly of expertise. It was not only revealing of curiosity and knowledge of the world, but a symbol of ownership and mastery, pursued by both aristocrats and wealthy merchants.
An Die ZĂĽrcherische Jugend (1799) showing a gentlemen of Zurich teaching his children natural history.
Gentleman's fad for collecting as a new social status (from Moses Harris's The Aurelian). The inscription reads "The works of the Lord are Great, Sought out of all of them that have Pleasure therein." Psalms CXI, V. 2.
Natural history interests fit the gentlemanly culture of empirical knowledge, the expanding world of European trade and colonization, a "Newtonian" program for organizing all knowledge, and natural theology's vision of Design and law in nature. The practical and moral values of studying nature combined with a fad for gentlefolk, and as with Newtonian physics, a market soon flourished for descriptive literature, identification manuals, and expensive illustrated works. Popular interest meant more studies, more collections, and with publications more sharing and comparison of knowledge.
So who were these new "naturalists" in practice? Gentleman collectors, clergymen, medical doctors, colonial traders and plantation owners and travelers, commercial and government-sponsored explorers, and collectors. Overall, the interests fostered increased opportunity for professionalism or a scholarly discipline, working with collections, writing and illustration for publications, scientific societies, and new museums.
As European trade and colonization expanded, natural history objects and species from afar fascinated the public more and more. Domestication of New World crops was one driver, with the stunning success of the introduction of potato (~1570) and maize (early 1500s ) as major new foodstuffs. Fashionable landscape gardening also brought many new species from around the world into European domestication, including many of today's popular trees and flowering shrubs. Sites such as the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and the Royal Gardens at Kew became more than nurseries or repositories, as destinations for fashionable outings.
As European trade and colonization (colored areas on the map) expanded, natural history objects and species from afar fascinated the public more and more. Entrepreneurs satisfied the market with specimens and publications, government expeditions of exploration brought even more novelties, and a few wealthy gentlemen followed their passion as explorers.
Among the most famous was the wealthy young Joseph Banks, who paid for the opportunity to accompany Captain James Cook on a British naval and Royal Society exploration of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia, 1768-71. Banks paid also for a staff -- a botanist, a naturalist, two artists, a secretary, and two servants to accompany and assist him. They collected and described an enormous amount of material, and both Banks and his artist Sydney Parkinson published travel accounts of their voyage and explorations. The exotic nature of tropical plants -- and the peoples and their lifeways -- was a sensation for audiences in Europe.
Banks's house in London became a site combining many of these developments -- a display of artefacts (and status), a fashionable gathering place, a salon for discussing botany and other sciences, and a working collection with resident botanist and curator. As a kind of private museum, it joined the new British Museum as loci of popular interest and public knowledge. The British Museum's initial collections (an enormous number of books, manuscripts, and natural history objects) were bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane, long-serving president of the Royal Society. The museum opened in 1759.
The influx of materials into Europe required a new attention to organizing, classifying, and ultimately placing new knowledge into a European conceptual system. The first need was practical -- to identify the uses of various plant and animal species, and understand their place in nature. Potential cultivation in Europe depended upon attention to the species' native ecology. The practical need to organize knowledge of identity, place, and function increased -- along with the recognition that traditional classifications were inadequate. Comparisons to known species naturally led to attempts to produce a theoretically satisfying "natural system" reflecting the Creator's design and natural laws.
Initially, conceptions of the relations of living beings were placed within a traditional framing, the Great Chain of Being. This is the hierarchy developed by Charles Bonnet in his Contemplation de la nature (1764). Note the connecting transitions between the major forms of organisms, all the way down to the inorganic. The part should be reflective of the whole, and the whole is a grand order from lower up to higher (closer to human). The "chain" should be unbroken, a plenitude of closely linking forms with no gaps, no extinctions, no new creations.
Many systems competed, but the standard became the hierarchical system of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus (1707-78). He standardized the format of naming species, with a hierarchical system of nomenclature:
Class
Order
Genus
species
(Variety)
By similarities of appearance, structure, habitat, and behavior, organisms are gathered in species. They are fixed in form, possess a defining eidos or essence, and reflect a higher order of creation in the world. Thus, the grouping into taxa reveals a plan of creation. With the standardization of names in Latin, and the preservation of illustrative type specimens in collections, naturalists could build their comparative knowledge. Standardization of taxonomy began with the 10th edition of Linnaeus's Systema naturae in 1758.
Linnaeus included humans in his scheme of nature, discussing in detail our status in the class Mammalia, the order Primates, the genus Homo, and the species sapiens. Within the species, he considered several geographic varieties of humans, which show a parallel to later discussion of "races". Note the categories of information used -- from anatomical structure to cultural behaviors. This is a suggestion of biological determinism for human nature. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, is his classifying of some humans as a separate species.
The question of human varieties or races was taken up most notably by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in his De generis humani varietate nativa (1775). He decided there is one species with five distinct varieties (Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, Malay), created by degeneration and the transforming force of climate.
