Middle-Class Victorian Men and Women Collect, Identify, and Preserve Plant and Animal Species, Broadening Human Knowledge of the Natural World and Transforming Biology Into a Mature Science
Overview
In the nineteenth century the science of biology, including botany and zoology, was just beginning to mature while astronomy, physics, and math were already established sciences. Victorian members of the middle class were affluent and interested in learning about the natural world. They had leisure time to attend lectures, visit museums, and collect specimens of plants, insects, animals, and fossils. Many of these enthusiasts provided specimens for naturalists and added to scientific knowledge and understanding of the natural world in a material way. By the end of the century, enthusiasm for amateur scientific enterprise waned as the increasing complexity of science and the need for professional training and expertise to keep up with advances in these disciplines overwhelmed the formally inexperienced.
Background
The natural world has been observed and commented on since Aristotle. Species and types of plants and animals were recognized, but classification went no farther than obvious divisions. Each natural historian drew and arranged specimens his or her own way. Understanding of the enormous varieties of organisms in the natural world could not become a science until an orderly system of classification and identification was devised.
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