history of science

Book review – Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography

9-minute read
keywords: biography, history of science

Until two weeks ago, Humboldt was one of several famous past scholars I only knew by name. Last month’s release of this short biography was the perfect opportunity to fill this knowledge gap, so I sat down to compare it with Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, which received widespread acclaim ten years ago. Historian Andreas W. Daum shows that good things come in small packages and delivers a factual, nuanced, and admirably concise biography. It also confirmed that reading two biographies back-to-back is a rewarding and instructive exercise. This, then, is the second of a two-part review of the long and remarkable life of Prussian naturalist, scholar, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

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Book review – The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

10-minute read
keywords: biography, history of science

There are many famous scholars that I only know by name, so, lately, I have been developing a taste for science biographies. With the publication last month of Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography, he was the next scholar to come onto my radar. However, I felt I could not do this subject justice without also considering Andrea Wulf’s highly-regarded 2015 biography The Invention of Nature, which won a slew of prizes and nominations. This, then, is the first of a two-part review of the long and remarkable life of Prussian naturalist, scholar, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

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Book review – Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order

8-minute read
keywords: history of science, taxonomy

As a bonus to conclude my (now) four-part review series on the history of taxonomy, I am looking back to Susannah Gibson’s 2015 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? After dealing with biographies of Linnaeus and Buffon, and then Ragan’s Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains, her book was just crying out to be read next. Given that those three were all published in 2023 and 2024, I will leave a comparison for the end of this review and first judge this book on its merits. As it turns out, this is an easy and intriguing read that I ignored for far too long.

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Book review – Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains: The History of High-Level Biological Classification

10-minute read
keywords: history of science, taxonomy

This is the third of a three four-part series on the history of taxonomy. In the last two reviews, I zoomed in on two important historical figures, Linnaeus and Buffon. Obviously, trying to understand how the living world is organized occupied the minds of many more people, and also has a far deeper pedigree than the 18th century. How deep? How about we take stock of the last 26 centuries. Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains by molecular biologist Mark A. Ragan is an encyclopaedic behemoth that charts the history of our thinking about high-level biological classification. The phrase “animal, vegetable, mineral” might ring a bell, but that division was never universal and there was always a shifting borderland around this, to say nothing of how modern developments have upended our understanding. If that sounds even remotely interesting, buckle up: engaging with this book will be a significant if worthwhile investment. Ragan combines a deeply researched history that draws on primary literature and authoritative translations with a tightly focused and well-structured text. The result is a scholarly monograph that is remarkably engaging. Its massive scope makes it one of those once-in-a-generation books that will be indispensable for science historians and academic libraries.

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Book review – Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

10-minute read
keywords: history of science, taxonomy

This is the second of a three-part review on the history of taxonomy. Having just read Gunnar Broberg’s biography of Linnaeus, I now turn to Every Living Thing. Linnaeus was not the only seventeenth-century scholar trying to get to grips with life’s diversity; French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (Buffon hereafter) was another. Though the two men never met, their ideas did. Author Jason Roberts provides a biography of Linnaeus and Buffon, writing an epic history of their work and intellectual legacy. It has quickly become one of my favourite books this year for introducing me to a new scientific hero.

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Book review – The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus

11-minute read
keywords: biography, history of science, taxonomy

Sometimes, topics forcefully suggest themselves to me for review. With the publication in 2023 of Mark Ragan’s Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains and then, earlier this year, Jason Roberts’s Every Living Thing, the history of taxonomy put itself on my to-do list. What better book to start this three-part review with than a biography of the legend himself? Though Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) is best remembered for the system of binomial nomenclature that we still use today to name species, that is only obvious with the benefit of hindsight. Linnaeus did not start his career with this goal in mind and the task for historian Gunnar Broberg is to show us how and why he got there. As this scholarly biography reveals, behind the reputation of Linnaeus as the father of biological taxonomy hides a remarkable polymath.

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Book review – The Story of Earth’s Climate in 25 Discoveries: How Scientists Found the Connections Between Climate and Life

7-minute read
keywords: earth sciences, history of science, paleoclimatology

This is the fifth instalment in what can unofficially be dubbed the 25 Discoveries series by palaeontologist and geologist Donald R. Prothero. After four previous books on fossils, rocks, dinosaurs, and evolution—I reviewed the last three (mostly) positively—Prothero now turns to palaeoclimatology. A chronology with character, this book takes the reader through 4.5 billion years (Ga) of Earth’s changing climate and its impact on life, while explaining how we know what we know.

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Book review – Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould

7-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, history of science, paleontology

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) was a well-known evolutionary biologist, palaeontologist, and science populariser. Amongst his many achievements stand the 300 popular essays that appeared from 1974 to 2001 in the magazine Natural History, published by the American Museum of Natural History. Many of these were collected in bestselling volumes that have been reprinted repeatedly. To celebrate this legacy of essays, his friends and close colleagues Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, themselves evolutionary biologists and palaeontologists of considerable renown, here present thirteen of their own essays that do exactly what the subtitle promises. They entertain as often as they intrigue in a collection that draws serious and, looking at the chapter titles, sometimes not-so-serious connections between macroevolution and palaeontology on the one hand, and popular culture, philosophy, and the history of science on the other. To my shame, I have to admit that I have never read Gould’s essays or his many books (while having several on my shelves). Macroevolutionaries convinced me that this gap in my knowledge needs closing.

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Book review – Metamorphosis: How Insects Are Changing Our World

5-minute read
keywords: entomology, history of science

Entomologist Erica McAlister, the Curator of Diptera at the Natural History Museum, London (NHM), has previously written two popular science books on flies, The Secret Life of Flies and The Inside Out of Flies. Her mission is to change your mind not just about flies, but, as Metamorphosis shows, about insects in general. In her third book with the NHM, she teams up with radio producer Adrian Washbourne with whom she worked on the 10-part BBC Radio 4 series Metamorphosis: How Insects Are Changing Our World that formed the basis for this book. A delightful potpourri of entomology, Metamorphosis is particularly strong on the science history front and further solidifies McAlister’s reputation as a science communicator par excellence.

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Book review – Mysteries of the Deep: How Seafloor Drilling Expeditions Revolutionized Our Understanding of Earth History

7-minute read
keywords: earth sciences, history of science, oceanography

Many advances in the earth sciences have come from one particular feat of technology and engineering: deep-sea drilling. Or to be more precise, it is the sediment cores thus extracted from the seafloor that have offered a wealth of information. In Mysteries of the Deep, retired geologist James Lawrence Powell gives a very readable whistlestop tour of the many remarkable insights these drilling expeditions have given us. In the process, he provides a microcosm of how science advances and how scientists change their minds, or sometimes fail to, in the face of new evidence.

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