Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science

ISBN-13: 9780226207919 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 448 str.

Jim Endersby

Opis

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first and most successful British men of science to become a full-time professional. He was also, Jim Endersby argues, the perfect embodiment of Victorian science. A vivid picture of the complex interrelationships of scientific work and scientific ideas, "Imperial Nature" gracefully uses one individual s career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era.
By analyzing Hooker s career, Endersby offers vivid insights into the everyday activities of nineteenth-century naturalists, considering matters as diverse as botanical illustration and microscopy, classification, and specimen transportation and storage, to reveal what they actually did, how they earned a living, and what drove their scientific theories. What emerges is a rare glimpse of Victorian scientific practices in action. By focusing on science s material practices and one of its foremost practitioners, Endersby ably links concerns about empire, professionalism, and philosophical practices to the forging of a nineteenth-century scientific identity."""