1700s
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Author_Mary Terrall
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Product details
- ISBN 9780226088600
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 16 Apr 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Natural history in the eighteenth century was many things to many people - diversion, obsession, medically or economically useful knowledge, spectacle, evidence for God's providence and wisdom, or even the foundation of all natural knowledge. Because natural history was pursued by such a variety of people around the globe, with practitioners sharing neither methods nor training, it has been characterized as a science of straightforward description, devoted to amassing observations as the raw material for classification and thus fundamentally distinct from experimental physical science. In Catching Nature in the Act, Mary Terrall revises this picture, revealing how eighteenth-century natural historians incorporated various experimental techniques and strategies into their practice. At the center of Terrall's study is Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757) - the definitive authority on natural history in the middle decades of the eighteenth century - and his many correspondents, assistants, and collaborators.
Through a close examination of Reaumur's publications, papers, and letters, Terrall reconstructs the working relationships among these naturalists and shows how observing, collecting, and experimenting fit into their daily lives. Essential reading for historians of science and early modern Europe, Catching Nature in the Act defines and excavates a dynamic field of francophone natural history that has been inadequately mined and understood to date.
Mary Terrall is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment, also published by the University of Chicago Press. She lives in Altadena, CA.
