Susannah C. Gibson Corpus Christi College
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THE PURSUIT OF NATURE: DEFINING NATURAL HISTORIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Susannah C. Gibson Corpus Christi College This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2011 This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration with others. This dissertation does not exceed 80,000 words, including footnotes. 2 The pursuit of nature: defining natural histories in eighteenth-century Britain Many histories of natural history see it as a descriptive science, as a clear forerunner to modern studies of classification, ecology and allied sciences. But this thesis argues that the story of unproblematic progression from eighteenth-century natural history to nineteenth- century and modern natural history is a myth. Eighteenth-century natural history was a distinct blend of practices and theories that no longer exists, though many individual elements of it have survived. The natural history that I discuss was not solely about collecting, displaying, naming and grouping objects. Though these activities played an important part in natural history (and in many histories of natural history) this thesis focuses on some other key elements of natural history that are too often neglected: elements such as experimenting, theorising, hypothesising, seeking causes, and explaining. Usually these activities are linked to natural philosophy rather than natural history, but I show how they were used by naturalists and, by extension, create a new way of understanding how eighteenth-century natural history, natural philosophy and other sciences were related. The first chapter is about the end of eighteenth-century natural history and looks at the role of the Linnean Society of London. It argues that this society tried to homogenise British natural history through the promotion of the Linnean sexual system of plant classification and through the suppression of the kinds of experimental and theoretical work described in this thesis. To understand that experimental and theoretical work, and to see what British natural history really entailed in this period, three central chapters focus on specific case studies. The second chapter shows how English-based naturalists such as John Ellis (1710-1776) approached the problem of distinguishing plants from animals, and especially about how they used chemical experiments to decide whether things such as coral and corallines should be placed in the animal or plant kingdom. The third chapter discusses sensitive plants and the overlaps between natural history and natural philosophy. It draws on case studies of naturalists who investigated things like plant motion and apparent plant sensitivity with different observational and experimental methods, and tried to explain them using various mechanical and vitalist explanations. The fourth chapter focuses on the controversy over whether plants (like animals) can be male or female and shows the theoretical and experimental tools that naturalists used to address this issue. Together, these chapters give a very detailed insight into the everyday practices and theories used by eighteenth-century naturalists and show the variety of activities that made up the field. The next two chapters focus on the identity and interactions of naturalists and show how they created a distinctive science: the fifth chapter is about how someone in England could go about becoming an authority on natural history in the late eighteenth century; and the final chapter looks outwards from Britain and examines how British natural history influenced, and was influenced by, European natural history; it uses correspondence to examine how British naturalists communicated with their overseas counterparts and what each party gained from those exchanges. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my doctoral research. My supervisor Jim Secord has been a constant source of knowledge, good advice and encouragement throughout my time in Cambridge and Nick Jardine, acting as my adviser, has likewise been wonderfully supportive of my efforts to produce something resembling a doctoral thesis – I am most grateful for the time and effort they’ve invested in my work. Thanks also to Jim White, Hasok Chang and Joe Cain for introducing me to the joys of history of science, and for encouraging me to pursue it further. Particular thanks for Joe for opening my eyes to the wonders of the life sciences. The Department of History and Philosophy of Science has been a wonderful place to work, not least because of its ever-encouraging staff. Thanks to Tamara Hug and all in the HPS office, and to the staff of the Whipple Library, especially Dawn Moutrey, for their help over the years. My time in HPS would have been poorer without its resident community of graduate students, and especially those in the Graduate I.T. Suite. I would especially like to thank those who were so kind as to proofread my thesis: Katie Taylor; Sophie Waring; Melanie Keene; Geoff Belknap; Katy Barrett; Caitlin Wylie; and Allison Ksiazkiewicz. (Any remaining errors are entirely my fault). Corpus Christi College, and especially all at Leckhampton, have been another source of encouragement. And finally, I would like to thank my family for their support through the years. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 7 1. The Linnean Society of London and the end of eighteenth-century natural history 22 The desire for a ‘scientific’ natural history, and the Linnean sexual system in Britain 24 Organisation and aims 29 Meetings and The Linnean Transactions 35 Conclusion 44 2. On being an animal; or, the eighteenth-century zoophyte controversy in Britain 46 The animal in the eighteenth century 49 John Ellis, animal chemistry and the problem of the zoophyte 52 Taxonomy, systems and the chain of being 60 Buffon and his followers in Britain 65 Conclusion 73 3. Newtonian vegetables and perceptive plants 76 Percival’s perceptive plant 80 Sensation, irritability and gravity: cause and effect in the vegetable kingdom 87 Conclusion 101 5 4. The sexes of plants 104 Linnæus, Smith and A dissertation on the sexes of plants 106 Scottish objections to the sexual system 113 Conclusion 122 5. The careering naturalist 125 Defining the naturalist 127 Writing, illustrating and publishing 133 Collecting and displaying 149 Conclusion 161 6. Species of exchange: natural history in Britain and Europe 164 Thomas Pennant’s letters to Europe 167 Making a mountain out of a molehill 182 Buffon in Britain 187 Conclusion 191 Conclusion 194 Bibliography 201 6 INTRODUCTION What is natural history? Or, more precisely, what was natural history in the eighteenth century? Though these two questions appear similar they in fact have very different answers. Many histories of eighteenth-century natural history see it as a descriptive science, as a clear forerunner to modern natural history. But here I argue that the story of unproblematic progression from eighteenth-century natural history to nineteenth-century and modern natural history is a myth. Eighteenth-century natural history was a distinct blend of practices and theories that no longer exists, though many individual elements of it have survived. The natural history that I discuss was not solely about collecting, displaying, naming and grouping objects. Though these activities played an important part in the subject (and in many histories of it) this thesis focuses on some other key elements of natural history that are too often neglected. These elements are things like experimenting, theorising, hypothesising, seeking causes, and explaining. Usually these activities are linked to natural philosophy rather than natural history, but I will show how they were used by naturalists and, by extension, create a new way of understanding how eighteenth-century natural history, natural philosophy and other sciences were linked. In the epilogue of Cultures of natural history, the most comprehensive collection of work on the history of natural history, Jim Secord concludes that the 26 essays that make up the book cannot answer the question ‘what is natural history?’.1 This is not because of any fault on the part of the authors, but because of the very nature of the subject. The definition of natural history has always been contentious; Secord believes that this is because definitions must centre around “acts of exclusion and inclusion”. In this thesis, I examine practices and theories that have subsequently been excluded from the history of natural history and show: how they fitted into the natural history of the eighteenth century; how they interacted with better-known natural historical practices such as collecting and classifying; how they related to other scientific disciplines; and how and why they began to be removed from natural historical discourses towards the end of the century. Despite renewed interest in the history of natural history in the past few decades, 1 Secord [1996] 448. 7 and despite the publication of wide-ranging survey works, these experimental and theoretical aspects have still not been fully considered and understood by historians.2 There is little agreement among historians as to exactly what natural history was in the eighteenth century. It has been variously described as a branch of history with a particular focus on description; the foundation of natural philosophy, responsible for the creation of ‘facts’; an aesthetic activity that centred on collection