ferris: the contribution of natural history to human progress 77 



The Legacy of the Old Natural History 



AVhat of the old natural history was there that may be carried over and 

 legitimately included within the field of consideration of the new natural history? 

 Shall we limit the applicability of the term itself to the activities of the period 

 up to roughly 1900, when it had a certain generally accepted meaning, or shall 

 we extend it to include at least some of the derivatives that have developed during 

 the last part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth? On 

 the one hand, we risk limiting it too much; on the other hand, we risk extending 

 it beyond any acceptable limits. For one thing, the earlier natural history was 

 certainly not co-extensive with all of what we now call biology and even many 

 of the special fields of the present day are certainly not entirely devoid of what 

 we might call natural history. If we search for the common element, we may at 

 last come to the solution that what we wish to find is to be sought for not so much 

 in content as in an attitude of mind. 



This attitude of mind has been discussed by Marston Bates in his delightful 

 book The Nature of Natural History. It is in brief, the attitude of mind which 

 displays interest primarily in the organism as a functioning whole and as a part 

 of the living world. With such a conception, the person who is interested only 

 in the permutations and combinations of the chromosomes within cells may call 

 himself a biologist, but he is certainly not a naturalist — a fact upon which he 

 would probably pride himself. But as soon as he begins to think about these 

 chromosomes and their permutations and combinations in conjunction with the 

 influences from the world around them, his thoughts begin to impinge upon 

 natural history, upon the fate of the organism which contains the chromosomes 

 as it has to accommodate itself to the facts of life. He begins to think of the 

 organism as a whole. The physiologist who is interested only in the processes 

 which go on within the membrane that surrounds a cell is certainly not a natu- 

 ralist and — if my observation of such individuals is at all correct — is not at all 

 disturbed by that fact. But when he begins to think about these cells as organized 

 into a complete plant or a complete animal, he must begin to think at least a 

 little about how this plant or this animal is going to live in company with and 

 in competition with other plants or animals. He begins to show some faint indi- 

 cations of the mental processes of a naturalist. 



On the other hand the thoroughgoing naturalist of the old style suffered cer- 

 tain limitations. His interest may have been confined entirely to the organism 

 as a whole, to the complete ignorance of the processes going on within the organ- 

 ism and upon which its outward functioning as a whole depends. He accepted 

 the fact that there is such a thing as heredity but was not much concerned with 

 just what heredity implies concerning the processes by which a character is passed 

 on from one generation to another. Concepts of processes being involved in this 

 functioning — processes of respiration, processes of the utilization of food, proc- 

 esses of excretion, processes of nervous stimuli and the transmission of those 

 stimuli, processes by which cells arise and divide and tissues are formed, proc- 

 esses by which substances are transferred from one cell to another — these were 

 entirely beyond his ken and hence beyond his interest. 



So. as knowledge of these processes began to appear and to increase and the 

 need for a detailed factual understanding of them became apparent, the naturalist 

 commenced to lose his hold upon the body of knowledge that was developing. It 



