Natural history

In the following century, a lecture on flying, delivered in 1617 by Fleder, rector of the grammar school at Tübingen, and published 11 years later, incited a poor monk to attempt to put his theory into practice, but his machinery broke down and he was killed.

In Francis Bacon's Natural History, there are two passages which refer to flying, though they scarcely bear out the assertion made by some writers that he first published the true principles of aeronautics.

The first is styled Experiment Solitary Touching Flying in the Air.

Quote, Certainly many birds of good wing, as kites and the like, would bear up good weight as they fly, and spreading feathers thin and close and in great breadth will likewise bear up a great weight, even being laid without tilting up on the sides.

They were quite uninjured, except the cock, which had its right wing hurt in consequence of a kick it had received from the sheep, but this took place before the ascent.

The balloon, which was painted with ornaments in oil colors, had a very showy appearance.

The first human being who ascended in a balloon was François Pilâtre de Rozier, 1756 to 1785, a native of Metz who was appointed superintendent of the natural history collections of Louis d'Esouette.

On the 15th of October 1783 and following days, he made several ascents, generally alone but once with a companion Giron de Villette, in a captive balloon, i.e. one attached by ropes to the ground, and demonstrated that there was no difficulty in taking up fuel and feeding the fire, which was kindled in a brazier suspended under the balloon when in the air.

It became known for the first time that our planet is an insignificant member of a great solar system, and that Christendom is both in extent and population but a small fraction of the habitable globe.

the revival of botany botany was among the first of the sciences to revive its comparatively early start was due to close association with the lucrative profession of medicine medicine itself was slow to shake off the unscientific tradition of the middle ages and its backwardness favored as it happened the progress of botany in the sixteenth century the physician was above all things the prescriber of drugs and since nine-tenths of all drugs were got from plants botanical knowledge was reckoned as one of his chief qualifications all physicians professed to be botanists and every botanist was thought fit to practise medicine three germans who were at once botanists and physicians brunfels bock and fuchs led the way by publishing herbals in which the plants of germany were described and figured from nature their first editions appeared in the years fifteen thirty fifteen thirty nine and fifteen forty two illustrated herbals were then no novelty but whereas they had hitherto supplied figures which had been copied time after time until they had often ceased to be recognizable brunfell set a pattern of better things by producing what he called herbarum vivi iconis life-like figures of the plants each of the three new herbals contained hundreds of large woodcuts those engraved for fuchs are probably of higher artistic quality than any that have appeared since each plant drawn in clear outline without shading fills a folio page upon which the text is not allowed to encroach the botanist will however remark that enlarged figures are hardly ever given so that minute flowers show as mere dots and that the details of the foliage are not so scrupulously delineated as in modern figures the text of brunfels and fuchs is of little interest being largely occupied with traditional pharmacy bach whose figures are inferior to those of brunfels and fuchs makes up for this deficiency by his graphic and sometimes amusing descriptions he delights in natural contrivances such as the hooks on the twining stem of the hop or the elastic membrane which throws out the seeds of the wood-sorrel brunfels has no intelligible sequence of species fuchs abandons the attempt to discover a natural succession and adopts the alphabetical order bach aims at bringing together plants which show mutual affinity gewecks ein ander verwandt though such natural groups as he recognizes are neither named nor defined these three german herbals really deserve to be called scientific to figure the plants of germany from the life to exclude such as existed only in books and to strive after a natural grouping was a first step towards a fruitful knowledge of plant life it is worth while to dwell for a moment upon the place where these herbals were produced along the rhine civilization and industry had for many years flourished together here and in the country to the east of the great river had sprung up that powerful union of seventy cities known in the thirteenth century as the confederation of the rhine four universities three of them on the banks of the rhine had been founded here printing and woodgraving had established themselves in their infancy here too the reformation found many early supporters there were historical economic and moral reasons why the first printed books on natural history illustrated by woodcuts drawn from the life should have been produced in the rhineland and why all their authors should have been protestants nearly every sixteenth-century botanist held the same faith the success of the first german herbalist brought a crowd of botanists into the field among whom were several whose names are still remembered with honour gessner of zurich made elaborate studies for a great history of plants which he did not live to complete it was he who first pointed out that the flower and fruit give the best indications of the natural relationships of plants and his many beautiful enlarged drawings set an example which has done much for scientific botany botanists began to understand what natural grouping means and to recognise that truly natural groups are not to be invented but discovered the almost accidental succession adopted by brunfels the alphabetical succession of fuchs the division according to uses kitchen herbs coronary or garland flowers c and the logical but too formal method of se salpini in which as in modern classification much use was made of the divisions in the ovary all these were left behind le bel separated unconsciously and imperfectly the monocotyledons from the dicotyledons recognised several easily distinguished families of flowering plants grasses ambelophers labiates etc and framed the first synoptic tables of genera the revival of zoology while the physicians of the rhineland were describing and figuring their native plants the study of animals began to revive two very different methods of work were tried by the zoologists of the sixteenth century one set of men who may be called the encyclopedic naturalists were convinced that books and especially the books of the ancients constituted the chief source of information concerning animals and most other things they extracted whatever they could from aristotle elian and pliny adding all that was to be learned from the narratives of recent travellers or from the collectors of skins and shells the books on which they chiefly depended being for the most part written by men who had not grappled with practical natural history and its problems were unfortunately altogether inadequate many of the statements brought together by the encyclopedic naturalist were ill attested some were even ridiculously improbable if inferences from the facts were attempted and this was rare they were more often propositions of morality or natural theology than the pregnant thoughts which suggest new inquiries hence the encyclopedic plan even when pursued by men of knowledge and capacity such as gessner and aldrovandi yielded no results proportional to the labor bestowed upon it the true path of biological progress had been missed naturalist of another school described and figured the animals of their own country or at least animals which they had closely studied rondelet described from personal observation the fishes of the mediterranean bellon described the fishes and birds that he had met with in france and the levant his book of birds fifteen fifty five is a folio volume in which some two hundred species are described and figured the naturel natural history of the species contains many curious observations perhaps the best things in the book are two figures placed opposite one another and lettered in correspondence one shows the skeleton of a bird the other that of a man the example of rondelet and bellon was followed by other zoological monographers who did more for zoology than all the learning of the encyclopaedists early notions of system simple-minded people who do not feel the need of precision in matters of natural history have in all ages divided animals into four-footed beasts which walk on the earth birds which fly fishes which swim and perhaps reptiles which creep this is the classification found in the babylonian and hebrew narratives of the great flood plants they naturally divide into trees and herbs it was not very long however before close observers became discontented with so simple a grouping they discovered that the bat is no bird, though it flies, that the whale is no fish, though it swims, that the snake comes nearer in all essentials to the four-footed lizard, and even to the beast of the field, than to the creeping earthworm.

At a much later time they discovered that pod-bearing or rose-like herbs may resemble pod-bearing or rose-like trees more closely than all trees resemble each other.

moreover a multitude of animals became known which cannot be classed as either beasts birds fishes or reptiles and a multitude of plants which cannot be classed as either trees or herbs aristotle found himself obliged to rectify the traditional classification of animals in order to remove gross anomalies when learning decayed the traditional classification came back thus the ortis sanitatis first published in fourteen seventy five and often reprinted adopts the division into one animals and things which creep on the earth two birds and things which fly three fishes and things which swim no consistent primary division of plants was proposed by greek or roman nor any one else until the seventeenth century a d this conflict of systems should have raised questions concerning the nature of classification and the relative value of characters some of the most striking resemblances found among animals in plants are only superficial others though far less obvious are fundamental whence this difference why should scientific zoology make so little of the place of abode and the mode of locomotion so much of the mode of reproduction and the nature of the skeleton the answers were vague and even the questions were rare and indistinct but a metaphorical term came into use which was henceforth more and more definitely associated with fundamental as distinguished from adaptive likeness Such likeness was called affinity.

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a french physician announced in sixteen fifty one that the lacteals open into a thoracic duct which joins the venous system in sixteen fifty three rudbeck of upsala described yet another set of vessels the lymphatics these again are provided with valves and open into the thoracic duct but are filled with a clear liquid the effect of these discoveries upon physiology and medicine was very great but it did not end there the whole circle of biological students and a still wider circle of men who pursued other sciences were thereby encouraged to follow the experimental path to knowledge wallace in describing the meetings of scientific men held in london in sixteen forty five and following years mentions the circulation of the blood the valves in the veins the lacteals and the lymphatic vessels among the subjects which had stirred their curiosity while the naturalist ray thanked god for permitting him to see the vain philosophy which had pervaded the university in his youth replaced by a new philosophy based upon experiment a philosophy which had established the weight and spring of the air invented the telescope and the microscope and demonstrated the circulation of the blood the lacteals and the thoracic duct the natural history of distant lands sixteenth century and earlier travel and commerce had made the ancient world familiar with many products of distant countries well-established trade routes kept europe in communication with arabia the persian gulf and india egyptians phoenicians and greeks explored every known sea and brought to mediterranean ports a variety of foreign wares under the roman empire strange animals were imported to amuse the populace silk pearls gay plumage dyes and drugs to gratify the luxury of the rich long after the fall of the empire foreign trade was kept up along the coasts of the mediterranean constantinople was still a great emporium silk was not only imported from the east but cultivated around constantinople in the sixth century the cotton plant the sugar-cane the orange tree and the lemon tree gradually spread northward and westward until they became established in italy spain and the islands of the mediterranean western europe had during many centuries little share in this commerce the large and conspicuous animals of africa and asia such as the elephant camel camelopard ostrich pelican parrot and crocodile would have passed out of knowledge altogether but for the chance mention in the bible and the bestiaries little was done to supplement native food plants and drugs by imported products and the knowledge of foreign vegetation became as indistinct as that of foreign animals in the thirteenth century communication between western europe and the far east was restored china was thrown open by the tartar conquest and marco polo was able to reach the court of khan Pilgrims from the Holy Land brought back information which, however scanty it might be, was eagerly received.

One of the earliest printed books, 1486, contains the travels of Bernard of Breidenbach, a canon of manes, whose narrative is adorned by curious woodcuts, in which we can make out a giraffe and a long-tailed macaque.

We also, of course, we expect our researchers to publish their work, and we hold a yearly conference for everyone that works in the chaos space, whether they're funded by us or not, to share all their latest progress and keep the whole field connected and communicating and moving forward.

Natural history studies are often a turning point.

Did you learn anything that surprised you from yours?

Yeah, so first I would say I would split natural history into two buckets, and we're chasing both of those.

I would say that there's one group, which is the conventional perspective clinical studies, and those are, I think, the gold standard and really important.

But there's now also these digital approaches that are more retrospective, like RARE-X and Citizen Health.

The perspective approach gives you really high quality data.

And the retrospective approaches can really scale because you can have a lot more patients than you can in a prospective trial.

slow and

majestic yeah um and you know we know what whales sound like we you know we sort of think we know these creatures but um i mean i used to work for the natural history society of northumbria and one of the really fun things there was taking care of the archive and in the archive um you know we had loads of art and loads of kind of eight some as early as like 16th 15th century but mainly 18th and 19th century depictions of animals including the originals of um the great geordie uh wildlife artist thomas buick who i recommend you all look up because he's fantastic And, you know, you'd see things and be like, you'd realize, oh, these people have never seen a rhinoceros.

They've seen Albrecht Durer's drawing of a rhinoceros, and Durer comes up in these chapters, obviously.

But they don't know, they don't have a clue what a rhinoceros looks like, kind of.

Whoever's making them has a very odd idea.

You can see that this goes through loads of different artists, so clearly an idea of what a whale looks like has taken shape, which doesn't really look like a baleen whale.

yeah um but again this is so you know in terms of obviously like this great age of like representations of natural history um people had started to interestingly people had started to uh draw the ancient history of nature as well they'd start to do like a When was Duria antiquior? There's a famous kind of first representations of dinosaurs start to arrive.

People are starting to draw stuff they've not drawn before.