Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science

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University of Chicago Press, May 15, 2008 - Biography & Autobiography - 429 pages
Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first—and most successful—British men of science to become a full-time professional. He was also, Jim Endersby argues, the perfect embodiment of Victorian science. A vivid picture of the complex interrelationships of scientific work and scientific ideas, Imperial Nature gracefully uses one individual’s career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era.
By analyzing Hooker’s career, Endersby offers vivid insights into the everyday activities of nineteenth-century naturalists, considering matters as diverse as botanical illustration and microscopy, classification, and specimen transportation and storage, to reveal what they actually did, how they earned a living, and what drove their scientific theories. What emerges is a rare glimpse of Victorian scientific practices in action. By focusing on science’s material practices and one of its foremost practitioners, Endersby ably links concerns about empire, professionalism, and philosophical practices to the forging of a nineteenth-century scientific identity.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Traveling
31
2 Collecting
54
3 Corresponding
84
4 Seeing
112
5 Classifying
137
6 Settling
170
7 Publishing
195
8 Charting
225
9 Associating
249
10 Governing
276
Conclusion
311
Notes
329
Bibliography
383
Index
411
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About the author (2008)

Jim Endersby is professor of the history of science at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Orchid: A Cultural History, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science, and A Guinea Pig's History of Biology.

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