CHAPTER II 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 



Before discussing a man's philosophy of nature it is necessary 

 to determine in what sense or senses he uses the term, for, as 

 Professor Lovejoy has cautioned us,^ the word "Nature" has 

 been employed to designate many and diverse concepts. For- 

 tunately, in the case of William Bartram, the task is not a diffi- 

 cult one. He had no complex philosophies; he was, we have 

 seen, a scientist and a Quaker, and it was this duality of his 

 interests and influences which colored his view of nature. As a 

 scientist he conceived of nature as, in Professor Lovejoy' swords, 

 " empirical reality "; as a Quaker, he saw in nature the mani- 

 festation, by means of this empirical reality, of God's majesty 

 and beauty. 



Bartram's scientific interests were centered in what was rather 

 loosely designated in the eighteenth century as natural history. 

 His particular branch of that study was botany, but he did not 

 hesitate to undertake zoological, ornithological, geological, eth- 

 nological, and even what would be termed today psychological 

 investigations. As a botanist he followed the example of his 

 father, who in turn was one of the many naturalists throughout 

 the world whose enthusiasm had been stimulated by the work 

 of the great Linnaeus. E. A. W. Zimmermann, Bartram's 

 German translator and a professor "matheseos et physices" at 

 Braunschweig,^ claimed that Linnaeus had revolutionized the 

 study of natural history and its related sciences. Linnaeus's 

 " Genauigkeit im Beobachten, sein Anordnen und Eintheilen 

 nach festen Grundsatzen, seine Anwendungen der von ihm 

 enteckten und beobachteten Korper blieben nicht auf seine 

 eigene Wissenschaf t eingeschrankt ; es verbreitete sich eben da- 

 durch gleichsam unmerklich eine neue Methode der Ordnung, 



^Arthur O. Lovejoy, " Nature as Aesthetic Norm." Modern Language Notes, 

 XLII, 444-450. 



^ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, XLV, 256. 



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