HEYDAY OF NATURAL HISTORY

I went to a talk tonight at the Randall Museum entitled “The Heyday of Natural History.” It was all about how observing nature, collecting bugs, identifying flowers, tide-pooling, etc. were popular pastimes in 19th century Britain. The interest crossed classes and ages, and just generally seemed like something people did for fun. Very interesting stuff, but unfortunately, the subject of the relative prevalence and role of naturalism today didn’t really come up. The guy (his name is John Dillon) was a historian, after all. I guess I was hoping for more of a sociological analysis than a strictly historic one. He had lots of interesting stories about some of the scientists and amateur historians of the age, though. Made me want to read some books on the period.

He was also using Keynote instead of PowerPoint. It has some very good looking, unique transition effects. The talk was also weirdly coincidental because I just finished reading a book on the history of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Totally different topics, of course, but still weird.