Reading the World (eBook)

British Practices of Natural History, 1760-1820

Edwin D. Rose (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
517 Seiten
University of Pittsburgh Press (Verlag)
978-0-8229-9189-2 (ISBN)

Infos

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—a period that marked the emergence of a global modernity—educated landowners, or “gentlemen,” dominated the development of British natural history, utilizing networks of trade and empire to inventory nature and understand events across the world. Specimens, ranging from a Welsh bittern to the plants of Botany Bay, were collected, recorded, and classified, while books were produced in London and copies distributed and used across Britain, Continental Europe, the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. Natural history connected a diverse range of individuals, from European landowners to Polynesian priests, incorporating, distributing, synthesizing, and appropriating information collected on a global scale.

In Reading the World, Edwin D. Rose positions books, natural history specimens, and people in a close cycle of literary production and consumption. His book reveals new aspects of scientific practice and the specific roles of individuals employed to collect, synthesize, and distribute knowledge—reevaluating Joseph Banks’s and Daniel Solander’s investigations during James Cook’s Endeavour voyage to the Pacific. Uncovering the range of skills involved in knowledge production, Rose expands our understanding of natural history as a cyclical process, from the initial collection and identification of specimens to the formal publication of descriptions to the eventual printing of sources.

Autor

Edwin D. Rose is a Leverhulme Trust early career research fellow in the School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds and a Bye-Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.3.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
• Zusatzinfo: 62 b&w illustrations and 10 color plates
• Verlagsort: PIttsburgh
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Australia natural history • Botany Bay • British Library • British Museum • British natural history • Captain James Cook • collecting natural history specimens • Daniel Solander • Darwin College faculty • eighteenth century British history • Gilbert White of Selborne • Global Modernity • History of Biology • history of medicine • History of Natural History • History of Science • history of science in the eighteenth century • history of science in the nineteenth century • James Cook • Joseph Banks • National Library of Wales • Natural History Museum • natural history of Britain • natural history specimens • nature specimens • New Zealand natural history • North-Welsh Bittern • scientific exploration • Society for the History of Natural History • Swansea University Alumni • Thomas Pennant • University of Cambridge faculty • University of Pittsburgh Press
• ISBN-10: 0-8229-9189-6 / 0822991896
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-9189-2 / 9780822991892