>>> RESPONSE QUESTIONS
1
1 - What is Aristotle’s main
innovation/ contribution to the classification of organisms? That is, what did
he do differently than any predecessors? Why does Aristotle’s or Pliny’s
natural histories include things like “wonder people” and dragons? What is the
explanation for their having been recognized equally with various kinds of
fish, deer, or other well-known animals?
Aristotle was the first to
attempt to classify groups of animals. It is the beginning of taxonomy. The article explains it this way, everyone
can tell that a bird and a reptile are of different groups, but how does one
classify the groups. Distinctions are obvious when comparing a cat with a
partridge, but what are these distinctions really, when organizing all animals
into categories.
Now we have established taxonomy, by which
life is organized in descending category from Doman, to kingdom, to Phylum, to
Class, to Order, to Family, to Genus, to Species. Aristotle was the first to
make the step towards this system. However, the way he went about it was a
little off, separating animals by whether or not they contain blood, and then
further, by their number of legs, and whether or not they lay eggs. The laying
eggs part at least, was a good start. Blood circulation on the other hand… not
so much.
In addition to being the
pioneers of taxonomy, Aristotle and Pliny were also limited by the
transportation constraints of their time. Most of the animals they were
describing from Africa or Asia they had never seen, and were described from the
accounts of travelers. I picture it like an international game of telephone,
the players of which have next to no context for the subject matter and are
experts in neither transporting messages nor observing animals.
Thus, Cyclops were just as
legitimate as elephants, and the black rhinoceros was mistaken for the unicorn.
2 - Why was there a new urgency to classify the diversity of life
in the 1700’s (Linnaeus’ time) than there was for ancient Greeks like Aristotle
and Pliny? What fundamentally had changed in Europe by the time Linnaeus was
observing the variety of living things. Why was Linnaeus called the “Little
Oracle”?
Linneaus’s time was a time of
exploration. Ships were sailing to new lands and hoping to profit from the
natural resources discovered there. Because of this cross-contamination of
culture, a lot of confusion was raised over the names of plants and animals. In
addition to that, the categories that European Naturalists had built, which
contained the limited community of European flora and fauna so well, broke down
when globalized. Creatures from the new world did not fit neatly into the
system, and a new, universal, system needed to be established.
As a result of exploration,
there was also a ‘natural artifact craze’ going on in Europe. People had a lot
of cool stuff in their homes (bones, taxidermy, things in jars) and they wanted
to know what order they went in. Something about the collections made them feel
that there was a natural way things went together, but how to go about it. Do
the bats go with the birds, or with the rodents?
Linneaus was the “Little Oracle”
because he was incredibly good at ordering organisms. He new what was related
to what, and could fit a species neatly into the web of life with little
difficulty. He set the rules for classification, dictating that animals must
have two names, genus and species, and that both names would be in the
universal latin. He also created the system of organization still used today,
the Linnaean Hierarchy. However, his ‘little oracle’ quality, his ability to
find the natural order when others failed to do so, is hard to explain.
Linneaus attributed it to ‘a gift from God.”
3 - Which definitions of “natural history” from the Natural Histories Project were
most interesting to you and why? How do any of them speak to you personally?
Relate interestingly to each other? Relate to zoos and the notions of natural
history that came up in this week’s readings?
·
“Natural History was not dead it was just
proliferating in the litter”
·
“It’s the Naturalists who are standing by the
window.”
·
“Natural History Facilitates people falling in
love with the world.”
·
“Natural History guided by love is much more
effective than conservation guided by fear.”
·
“We are choosing to fall in love instead of fall
in cynicism and the vehicle for that is Natural History.”
·
Promoting and understanding appreciating of the
living an non living world, in a celebratory way.
·
“For me it’s the wonder.”
·
Inspiring and humbling
·
‘Natural History for Cyborgs’
·
Natural history is not a body of knowledge it is
a practice.
·
That’s the problem with the word Natural
History, it freezes it in the past.
What I enjoyed the most about these definitions is the theme
of love. I’ve always felt that way about ‘natural history’. I don’t know what
the means exactly, but I know that I am in love with the world and I want to
collect all the pieces of it that I can and wonder in their glory. I don’t
think that wonder is natural history itself, I think it is the engine behind
natural history. Maybe natural history is a practice, a practice of collecting
pieces of the world and ordering them, in an attempt to both understand and
share with others, hopefully indefinitely, what you are already so enamored
with. I’m still not set on a definition, but I think that love is the engine, I
really do. My favorite quote was “We are choosing to fall in love instead of
fall in cynicism and the vehicle for that is Natural History.” Natural history
is not about fear of losing the world it is celebration of the world we have or
have had and lost.
4
– Pick out one quote from Annie Dillard’s essay on Seeing that stood out to you and discuss it further. What is
significant about it and why? If it connects to any of the other readings or
the Observation 1 exercise to you, mention how.
“I
saw color patches for weeks after I read this wonderful book. It was summer;
the peaches were ripe in the valley orchards. When I woke in the morning,
color-patches wrapped around m eyes, intricately, leaving not one unfilled
spot. All day long I walked among shifting color-patches that parted before me
like the Red Sea and closed again in silence, transfigured, wherever I looked
back. Some patches swelled and loomed, while others vanished utterly, and dark
marks flitted at random over the whole dazzling sweep. But I couldn’t sustain
the illusion of flatness. I’ve been around for too long. Form is condemned to
an eternal danse macabre with meaning. I couldn’t un-peach the peaches. Nor can
I remember ever having seen without understanding; the color patches of infancy
are lost. My brain must have been smooth as any balloon.”
I think this brings up a really important part point
about ‘seeing’ things as they are, not just in the literal sense, but also in
the metaphorical ‘seeing’ of science. The author is saying that what we see is
altered by how we interpret it. We cannot see things exactly as they are
because our brains know too much about what we are looking at. I see something,
and automatically interpret it as what I think it is. For example, when you
read an essay that you have written in your head, you gloss over all the
mistakes and stumbly sentences. When you read it out loud, or have someone else
read it, you are unable to automatically gloss over the mistakes.
I think this concept also applies to science. The
worst thing you can do in research is go into it expecting a certain result.
Research is about finding the truth, whatever that may be. When one goes about answering a question with
science, it is important to conduct research without your emotions skewing the
data. Do elephants really have a longer life expectancy in the wild, or do we
just want them too, because we hate zoos? Is our data being skewed by what we
think we already know?
Which brings me back to what was said in the
definitions of natural history that we listened to, about the difference
between natural historians and conservationists. If we go about things
expecting a certain result, driven from fear, we will find that result. If we
try to see things how they are, without expectations, then we are doing so out
of curiosity and celebration.
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