Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-pdxrj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-04T00:26:12.683Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Museums

from PART I - WORKERS AND PLACES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2009

By
Mary Winsor
Edited by
Peter J. Bowler  and
John V. Pickstone
Peter J. Bowler
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
John V. Pickstone
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access

Summary

Whereas the general public experiences a natural history museum as a series of educational displays, particularly of fossils and stuffed animals, the scientific importance of these institutions lies in the much larger collections of specimens behind the scenes that make possible an inventory and analysis of the world’s diversity. The history of natural history museums is more often studied as part of the history of culture rather than as belonging to the history of science, but the role of well-documented collections as an instrument that makes systematic comparison possible deserves investigation. It has been argued that museums were the focus for a new type of science that came to the fore around 1800 based on the analysis of large bodies of information by professional scientists. Although steps in this direction had been taken earlier, the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, founded by the revolutionary government in Paris in 1793, became the model for this new science. The subsequent transformation and proliferation of natural history museums was responsible for a substantial increase in the kinds of science that depended on collections.

Plentiful raw material awaits historians in museums’ records, in the scientific literature, and even in the physical evidence of collections and buildings. A comprehensive survey ought to pay attention to the related subjects of herbaria, botanical and zoological gardens, medical museums, ethnographic collections, and the international trade that gave specimens monetary value, as well as comparisons with art museums and other exhibitions, but here the focus will be on the zoological activity of major natural history museums.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 60 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appel, Toby A., The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987);Google Scholar
Bankaert, Claude, Cohen, Claudine, Corsi, Pietro, and Fisher, Jean-Louis, eds., Le Museum au premier siecle de son histoire (Paris: Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 1997);Google Scholar
Barrow, Mark V., Jr., A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998);Google Scholar
Bourdier, Franck, “Origines et transformations du cabinet du Jardin Royal des Plantes,” Histoire des Sciences, 18 (1962).Google Scholar
Bowler, Peter J., Life’s Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life’s Ancestry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Bridson, Gavin, The History of Natural History: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1994).Google Scholar
Brockway, Lucile H., Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden (New York: Academic Press, 1979);Google Scholar
Chabeuf, Maurice and Philibert, Jean, “Le Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de Dijon de 1836 à 1976,” Bulletin Scientifique de Bourgogne, 33 (1980);Google Scholar
Corsi, Pietro, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790–1830 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988);Google Scholar
Craw, Robin, “Margins of Cladistics: Identity, Difference and Place in the Emergence of Phylogenetic Systematics, 1864–1975,” in Trees of Life: Essays in Philosophy of Biology, ed. Griffiths, Paul, Australian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol. II (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).Google Scholar
Cuvier, Georges, “Notice sur l’établissement de la collection d’anatomie comparée du Muséum,” Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, 2 (1803);Google Scholar
Dance, S. Peter, A History of Shell Collecting (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986);Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles Robert, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p..Google Scholar
Deleuze, Joseph-Philippe-François, Historie et description du Muséum Royale d’Histoire Naturelle, 2 vols. (Paris: Royer, 1823);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickson, Lovat, The Museum Makers: The Story of the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1986).Google Scholar
Donnelly, W. A., Shaw, W. B., and Gjelsness, R. W., eds. The University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), vol. 4;Google Scholar
Farber, Paul, The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760–1850 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farber, Paul Lawrence, “The Type-Concept in Zoology during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Biology, 9 (1976);Google Scholar
Findlen, Paula, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);Google Scholar
Flower, William Henry, “Modern Museums” (Presidential address to the Museums Association, 1893)Google Scholar
Flower, William Henry, Essays on Museums and Other Subjects Connected with Natural History (London: Macmillan, 1898), at p. 37.Google Scholar
Forgan, Sophie, “The Architecture of Display: Museums, Universities and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History of Science, 32 (1994);CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Günther, Albert E., A Century of Zoology at the British Museum through the Lives of Two Keepers: 1815–1914 (London: Dawsons, 1975);Google Scholar
Gage, Andrew Thomas and Stearn, William Thomas, A Bicentenary History of the Linnean Society of London (London: Academic Press, 1988);Google Scholar
Gijzen, Agatha, ‘S Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie, 1820–1915 (Rotterdam: W. L. & J. Brusse’s Uitgeverscmaatschappij, 1938);Google Scholar
Gillispie, Charles Coulston, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980);Google Scholar
Girouard, Mark, Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1981), p.;Google Scholar
Graefrath, Robert, “Zur Entwurfs- und Baugeschichte des Museums für Naturkunde der Universität Berlin,” Beiträge zur Geschichte des Museums für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und seinen aktuellen Forschungs- und Bildungsaufgaben. Wissenschaftlich Zeitschrift der Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin, Reihe Mathematik/Naturwissenschaften, 38, no. 4 (1989);Google Scholar
Gray, James Edward, “On Museums, Their Use and Improvement, and on the Acclimatization of Animals,” Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 14 (1864), and in Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1865), 75–86;Google Scholar
Grote, Andreas, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo: Die Welt in der Stube: Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 bis 1800, Berliner Schriften zur Museumskunde, vol. 10 (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1994).Google Scholar
Hamann, Günther, Das Naturhistorische Museum in Wien: Die Geschichte der Wiener naturhistorischen Sammlungen bis zum Ende der Monarchie unter Verwendung älterer Arbeiten von Leopold Joseph Fitzinger und Hubert Scholler mit einem Kapitel über die Zeit nach 1919 von Max Fischer – Irmgard Moschner – Rudolf Schönmann (Vienna: Naturhistorisches Museum [Veröffentlichungen aus dem Naturhistorischen Museum, Neue Folge 13], 1976);Google Scholar
Hamy, Ernest-Théodore, “Les derniers jours du Jardin du Roi et la fondation du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle,” in Centenaire de la fondation du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1893);Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar
Hart, Sidney and Ward, David C., “The Waning of an Enlightenment Ideal: Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, 1790–1820,” in New Perspectives on Charles Willson Peale: A 250th Anniversary Celebration, ed. Miller, Lilian B. and Ward, David C. (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991);Google Scholar
Hart, Sidney and Ward, David C., Mermaids, Mummies, and Mastadons: The Emergence of the American Museum (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1992).Google Scholar
Herber, Elmer Charles, ed., Correspondence between Spencer Fullerton Baird and Louis Agassiz – Two Pioneer American Naturalists (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1963);Google Scholar
Hounsome, M. V., “Research: Natural Science Collections,” in Manual of Curatorship: A Guide to Museum Practice, ed. Thompson, John M. A. et al., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992);Google Scholar
Hull, David, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Impey, Oliver and MacGregor, Arthur, eds., The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985);Google Scholar
Koerner, Lisbet, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999);Google Scholar
Kohlstedt, Sally G., “Essay Review: Museums: Revisiting Sites in the History of the Natural Sciences,” Journal of the History of Biology, 28 (1995);CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohlstedt, Sally G., “Curiosities and Cabinets: Natural History Museums and Education on the Antebellum Campus,” Isis, 79 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, “Australian Museums of Natural History: Public Priorities and Scientific Initiatives in the 19th Century,” Historical Records of Australian Science, 5 (1983);Google Scholar
Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, “International Exchange and National Style: A View of Natural History Museums in the United States, 1850–1900,” in Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, ed. Reingold, Nathan and Rothenberg, Marc (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, “Henry A. Ward: The Merchant Naturalist and American Museum Development,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 9 (1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohlstedt, Sally G., “Museums on Campus: A Tradition of Inquiry and Teaching,” in The American Development of Biology, ed. Rainger, Ronald, Benson, Keith, and Maienschein, Jane (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Lönnberg, Einar, “The Natural History Museum (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseum) Stockholm,” Natural History Magazine, 4 (1933);Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Lemoine, Paul, “Le Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle,” Archives de Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 12, ser. 6 (1935);Google Scholar
Limoges, Camille, “The Development of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris, c. 1800–1914,” in The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808–1914, ed. Fox, Robert and Weisz, George (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Lurie, Nancy Oestreich, A Special Style: The Milwaukee Public Museum: 1882–1982 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Milwaukee Public Museum, 1983).Google Scholar
Mabberley, D. J., Jupiter Botanicus: Robert Brown of the British Museum (Braunschweig: J. Cramer, 1985);Google Scholar
Mayr, Ernst, “The Role of Systematics in Biology,” Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), at p. 417.Google Scholar
Mayr, Ernst and Goodwin, Richard, “Biological Materials, Part I: Preserved Materials, and Museum Collections,” pamphlet, Biology Council, Division of Biology and Agriculture, publication 399 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council, [n.d., ca. 1955]).Google Scholar
McOuat, Gordon, “Cataloguing Power: Delineating ‘Competent Naturalists’ and the Meaning of Species in the British Museum,” British Journal for the History of Science, 34 (2001).Google Scholar
Melville, Richard V., Towards Stability in the Names of Animals: A History of the Internationl Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, 1895–1995 (London: International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, 1995);Google Scholar
Morrell, Jack, John Phillips and the Business of Victorian Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).Google Scholar
Morris, P. A., “An Historical Review of Bird Taxidermy in Britain,” Archives of Natural History, 20 (1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Riordan, C. E., The Natural History Museum, Dublin (Dublin: The Stationery Office [1983]).Google Scholar
Orosz, Joel J., Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740–1870 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), p. 87.Google Scholar
Outram, Dorinda, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984);Google Scholar
Outram, Dorinda, “New Spaces in Natural History,” in Cultures of Natural History, ed. Jardine, N., Secord, J. A., and Spary, E. C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Pickstone, John V., “Museological Science? The Place of the Analytical/Comparative in 19th-Century Science,” History of Science, 32 (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomian, Krzysztof, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990);Google Scholar
Porter, Charlotte M., “The Natural History Museum,” in The Museum: A Reference Guide, ed. Shapiro, Michael Steven (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990);Google Scholar
Pujoulx, J. B., Promenades au Jardin des Plantes, à la Ménagerie et dans les Galeries du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, 2 vols. (Paris: La Libraire Économique, 1803);Google Scholar
Rainger, Ronald, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890–1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Rivinus, E. F. and Youssef, E. M., Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), p..Google Scholar
Roger, Jacques, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, trans. Sarah Lucille Bonnefoi (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997);Google Scholar
Rose, Roger G., A Museum to Instruct and Delight: William T. Brigham and the Founding of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Rudner, Ione, “The Earliest Natural History Museums and Collectors in South Africa,” South African Journal of Science, 78 (1982);Google Scholar
Rupke, Nicolaas A., Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994);Google Scholar
Rupke, Nicolaas A., “The Road to Albertopolis: Richard Owen (1804–92) and the Founding of the British Museum of Natural History,” in Science, Politics and the Public Good: Essays in Honour of Margaret Gowing, ed. Rupke, Nicolaas A. (London: Macmillan, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellers, Charles Coleman, Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural History and Art (New York: Norton, 1980);Google Scholar
Sheets-Peyenson, Susan, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1988);Google Scholar
Sheets-Peyenson, Susan, “‘Stones and Bones and Skeletons’: The Origins and Early Development of the Peter Redpath Museum (1882–1912),” McGill Journal of Education, 17 (1982);Google Scholar
Sloan, Phillip Reid, “Introductory Essay: On the Edge of Evolution,” in Richard Owen, The Hunterian Lectures in Comparative Anatomy: May and June 1837 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Smit, Pieter, “International Influences on the Development of Natural History in the Netherlands and Its East Indian Colonies between 1750 and 1850,” Janus, 65 (1978).Google ScholarPubMed
Spallanzani, Maria-Franca, “La collezione naturalistica di Lazzaro Spallanzani,” Lazzaro Spallanzani e la Biologica del Settecento: Teorie, Esperimenti, Istitutzioni Scientifiche, Biblioteca della ‘Rivista di Storia delle Scienze Mediche e Naturali,’ vol. 22 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1982);Google Scholar
Stafleu, Frans A., Linnaeus and the Linneans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1971);Google Scholar
Stearn, William T., The Natural History Museum at South Kensington (London: Heinemann, 1981).Google Scholar
Stein, Barbara R., “Annie M. Alexander: Extraordinary Patron,” Journal of the History of Biology, 30 (1997);CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterling, Keir B., ed. An International History of Mammalogy (Bel Air, Md.: One World Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Stevens, Peter, “Haüy and A.-P. de Candolle: Crystallography, Botanical Systematics and Comparative Morphology, 1780–1840,” Journal of the History of Biology, 17 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Peter F., The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Stresemann, Erwin, Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p.;Google Scholar
Sulloway, Frank, “Darwin’s Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and Its Aftermath,” Journal of the History of Biology, 15 (1982), at p. 356;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waiser, W. A., “Canada on Display: Towards a National Museum, 1881–1911,” in Critical Issues in the History of Canadian Science, Technology and Medicine, ed. Jarrell, Richard A. and Roos, Arnold E. (Thornhill: HSTC Publications, 1983);Google Scholar
Wallace, Alfred Russel, “American Museums,” Fortnightly Review, 42 (1887);Google Scholar
Winsor, Mary P., Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winsor, Mary P., “Louis Agassiz’s Notion of a Museum: The Vision and the Myth,” in Cultures and Institutions of Natural History, ed. Ghiselin, Michael T. and Leviton, Alan E., Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences No. 25 (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2000).Google Scholar
Wonders, Karen, Habitat Dioramas (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1993);Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Museums
  • Edited by Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast, John V. Pickstone, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572019.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Museums
  • Edited by Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast, John V. Pickstone, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572019.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Museums
  • Edited by Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast, John V. Pickstone, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Science
  • Online publication: 28 November 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572019.005
Available formats
×