For the ancients, mythology suggested powerful interconnections among
the natural, the human, and the imaginary. Gods were like humans, humans
were like animals, animals were like plants, plants were like humans, and
vice versa. Spontaneous generation, parthenogenesis by fire, impregnation
by bulls, swans, rain, and showers of gold were all reminders of permeable
boundaries between living and nonliving, animate and inanimate, spiritual
and material. Many plants and animals were sacred to  the
ancients for precisely this reason. A butterfly might be the soul
of a deceased person and, more importantly, the soul might be "like" a
butterfly. A plant might have powerful medicinal uses, but it was also
linked to a specific god or goddess. Wormwood, for example, was sacred
to Artemis and, since this goddess was associated with women, the herb
was often used to cure female ailments (Pliny HN 25.73).The power
of animals could be invoked for practical reasons (hunting) or spiritual
purposes (rituals and sacrifices). Thus the bull might be concurrently
associated with human food, the story of the minotaur, and the power of
Zeus. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was perhaps the first systematic natural historian.
He described over 500 species; in fact, roughly one quarter of Aristotle's
known work refers to zoology. Pliny's Naturalis Historia
was dedicated
to Titus in A.D. 77; it included almost 40 books ranging through information
concerning astronomy, geography, human biology, zoology, botany, medical
botany, metallurgy, and geology. Pliny claimed that his work drew on 100
earlier authors and included 20,000 "facts" of nature. His texts present
a fascinating mix of careful observations and subsequently supported scientific
facts, interlaced with myths, false reports, exaggerations and fanciful
stories. The work became a standard source for classical knowledge about
the natural world.
During the Middle Ages, natural history was a complex combination of
fabrication, misinformation, and occasionally accurate reportage. Dragons
vied with pythons for space in the pages of manuscripts and bestiaries,
while herbals listed cures that were sometimes effective and often far-fetched.
Travelers reported ten-foot lizards (komodo dragons) on islands in the
South Seas, but such accurate reports appeared alongside accounts of the
existence of many-headed hydras like the one killed by Hercules. Medical
botany was suspect when its cures did not work and suspect when they did;
plants that could relieve physical symptoms seemed like magic well into
the modern era. Whole areas of rational inquiry into the workings of nature
were also off limits for religious reasons; those who delved too far into
the mysteries of creation might be branded as lunatics, sorcerers, necromancers,
or godless heathens. Scientific inquiry was too close to witchcraft to
be accepted by the wider society.
The Renaissance, by contrast, was characterized by a new spirit of curiosity
and discovery. Once the earth was removed from the center of the universe
by Copernicus, most other ideas about the natural world were likewise subject
to revision. New understanding accompanied new discoveries in fields ranging
from geology and botany to anatomy and physiology. But while Vesalius was
producing the first accurate anatomical drawings, and Harvey was describing
circulation of the  blood,
confusion and debate flourished around a wide range of "scientific" questions.
In many cases, empirical observation came into direct conflict with religious
belief. What was the connection (if any) between the Biblical flood and
fossil
remains? Was the world as it now appeared unchanged since ancient times?
Were all human beings members of the same species (monogenesis) or descendants
of different original types (polygenesis)? What accounted for "monsters"
if the natural system otherwise operated with
such predictable regularity? Were "freaks" of nature part of a divine plan
or merely mysteries that had to be accepted as beyond the realms of human
knowing? How should people whose ideas of wild animals were based on foxes,
wolves, and bears react when the first rhinoceroses
and elephants were uncrated in London and Venice? How could poisons
from plants kill, while tonics from the identical plants saved lives? Anxieties
like these plagued scientists and nonscientists for several centuries because
of unquestioned theological assumptions, insufficient evidence, and the
absence of a rigorous experimental methodology. At the same time, voyages
of exploration and discovery were bringing back astonishing creatures
from the land and the sea, plants of astonishing usefulness and variety,
as well as news of human societies that seemed to have nothing to do with
the history or the order of Europe. Diversity in natural and social spheres
produced a sense that the world was more complex than it had seemed to
earlier observers.
By the 1700s, revolutionary thinking was not only the province of philosophers,
political theorists, and religious reformers. Natural philosophers, botanical
collectors, physicians, and amateur naturalists were all engaged in radically
new ways of organizing ideas about the nonhuman world. During these years,
natural historians constituted a varied but often interrelated group of
researchers. Joseph
Kastner has called this loose affiliation of corresponding scientists
perhaps "the eighteenth century's most pervasive and influential intellectual
group." They "were found all the way from Siberia to South America, and
by their incessant correspondence, they kept information and  ideas
moving through all the civilized world. John Amman, the English physician
working in St. Petersburg, might send a report on Russian rhubarb to Johann
Jakob Dillenius, the German botanist working in England, who would pass
the information on to Albrecht van Haller, the argumentative plant physiologist
of Gottingen, who would inform Isaac Lawson, the physician general of the
British Army in Flanders, who would tell one of the Jussieu brothers in
Paris, who might suggest to Sir Hans Sloane in London that he pass the
information on to Patrick Browne in Jamaica" (Species of Eternity
19-20). Likewise, Thomas
Jefferson received tropical varieties of plants for his gardens at
Monticello while also sending mammoth bones to Paris for inclusion in the
natural history museum that had been organized by the Comte
de Buffon. Another important aspect of eighteenth century natural science
was the discovery of countless new species, many of which seemed as strange
as monsters or mythical beasts. The South Carolina physician Alexander
Garden, for example, described a new amphibian to Linnaeus,
a snakelike creature with only two front legs and feathery gills behind
its head. Siren lacertina Linnaeus called it, creating a new class
of amphibian--the mud iguana or mudpuppy--in the process. Garden also presented
Linnaeus with a three-foot long amphibian that appeared to be a watery
serpent, except for its four feet, each of which had two toes: the two-toed
conger eel.
Of course, this dramatically expanding discourse of natural science
provided poets, writers, painters, illustrators, and the general public
with powerful images and food for the imagination. In addition, the "split"
we now accept between the sciences and the arts simply did not exist before
the twentieth century. Wordsworth
read Erasmus
Darwin and used his psychological theories in lyric poems. Meanwhile,
Darwin (Charles's grandfather) was writing book-length poems of botanical
observations in heroic couplets. Joseph
Priestley penned numerous poems and theological essays  while
also discovering oxygen. Percy
Shelley experimented with chemical and electrical equipment in his
rooms at Oxford, and Mary
Shelley was talking about the Italian "electrical" scientist Luigi
Galvani on the night she "conceived" Frankenstein's monster. Coleridge
sought poetically and philosophically for "one Life within us and abroad"
that might unify the seemingly disparate elements of creation. Blake
thought not only that "The Catterpillar on the Leaf / Reminds thee of thy
Mother's Grief," but that "A Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all heaven
in a rage." Galvanic nerve responses, luminous plankton, sensitive plants
(mimosa), poison trees (bohun upas), "intelligence" in animals,
and "sexuality" in plants: ideas and images like these fostered poetic
reflection and scientific lyricism throughout the century before Charles
Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). As late as 1844,
a textbook on astronomy could still offer lyrical descriptions of the names
of the planets that made perfect sense as scientific discourse: "As a goddess,
Venus was extensively worshipped by the heathens, under various names,
as Ashtaroth, Astarte, Aphrodite, Cotitta, &c. As the morning star,
she is known by the titles of Phosphorus and Lucifer; as the evening star,
by those of Hesperus and Vesper. Her sign among astronomers is said to
resemble a mirror with a handle at the bottom" (Kendall, Uranography,
or, a Description of the Heavens 215). A Romantic Natural History
helps us to recall the extent to which "science" and "art" were not seen
as distinct for most of human history. In addition, reflection on the contexts
of both of these realms of human activity (what poems were scientists reading
and writing? what sciences were poets and painters studying?) should help
to reveal the origins of our own cultural assumptions about the place of
humans in the nonhuman world.
|