History of natural history

The roots of natural history go back to Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who analyzed the diversity of the natural world. From the ancient Greeks until the work of Carolus Linnaeus and other 18th century naturalists, the central concept tying together the various domains of natural history was the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being, which arranged minerals, vegetables, animals, and higher beings on a linear scale of increasing "perfection." Natural history was basically static through the Middle Ages, when the work of Aristotle was adapted into Christian philosophy, particularly by Thomas Aquinas, forming the basis for natural theology. In the Renaissance, scholars (herbalists and humanists, particularly) returned to direct observation of plants and animals for natural history, and many began to accumulate large collections of exotic specimens and unusual monsters. The rapid increase in the number of known organisms prompted many attempts at classifying and organizing species into taxonomic groups, culminating in the system of Linnaeus.

In the 18th century and well into the 19th century, natural history as a term was frequently used to refer to all descriptive aspects of the study of nature, as opposed to political or ecclesiastical history; it was the counterpart to the analytical study of nature, natural philosophy. As such, the subject area would include aspects of physics, astronomy, archeology, etc.; this broad usage is still used for some institutions including museums and societies. Beginning in Europe, professional disciplines such as physiology, botany, zoology, geology, and later cytology and embryology, formed. Natural history, formerly the main subject taught by college science professors, was increasingly scorned by scientists of a more specialized manner and relegated to an "amateur" activity, rather than a part of science proper. Particularly in Britain and America, this grew into specialist hobbies such as the study of birds, butterflies and wildflowers; meanwhile, scientists tried to define a unified discipline of biology (though with only partial success, at least until the modern evolutionary synthesis). Still, the traditions of natural history continued to play a part in late 19th- and 20th-century biology, especially ecology, ethology, and evolutionary biology, and re-emerges today as Integrative Organismal Biology.

Amateur collectors and natural history entrepreneurs played an important role in building the large natural history collections of the 19th and early-20th centuries, particularly the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.