Hearsay Is Not Excluded: A History of Natural History (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)

Synopsis

This chronicle of natural history argues that the modern environmental crisis and rise in science skepticism codeveloped with the rise of ever narrower scientific disciplines For millennia, the field of natural history promoted a knowledgeable and unifying view of the world. In contrast, the modern rise of narrow scientific disciplines has promoted a dichotomy between nature and culture on the one hand and between scientific and folk knowledge on the other. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, history, and environmental science, Michael R. Dove argues that the loss of this historic holistic vision of the world is partly to blame for contemporary environmental degradation and science skepticism. Dove bases this thesis on a study of four pioneering natural historians across four centuries: Georg Eberhard Rumphius (seventeenth century), Carl Linnaeus (eighteenth century), Alfred Russel Wallace (nineteenth century), and Harold C. Conklin (twentieth century). Dove studies their field craft and writing; the political, cultural, and environmental circumstances in which they worked; the sources of their insight; and the implications of their work for modern society. Most of all, the book seeks to discover what enabled those natural historians to straddle boundaries that today seem impassable and to distill that wisdom for a modern world greatly in need of a holistic vision of people and environment.

Copyright:

1964

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780300277241

Related ISBNs:

9780300270105

Publisher:

Yale University Press

Date of Addition:

02/26/24

Copyrighted By:

renewed

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Science, Outdoors and Nature, Earth Sciences

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.