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Hi Dave P. & All, Aug 24, 2015
I enjoyed your article in today's paper
http://thechronicleherald.ca/thenovascotian/1306838-nova-scotia-naturally-a-love-of-the-natural-world
I wondered about your definition of Natural History but find that it is
not seriously different from the one in my 1914 Webster's dictionary.
"Formerly, the study, description and classification of animals, plants,
minerals and other natural objects, thus including the modern sciences of
zoology, botany, mineralogy, etc., in so far as they existed at that time.
Now commonly restricted to a study of these subjects in a more or less
superficial way... and usually further restricted to the study of animals
and plants, esp. the former, and their habits."
I would be inclined to be more inclusive and disinclined to formulate a
rigid definition of Natural History because I think it should ideally
include all ground truth and this is still possible only to a limited
degree.
For example, if animals are arbitrarily taken as the focus of Natural
History then clearly this should include some comprehension of climatic
effects past and present, vegetative cover past and present and since
vegetative cover is a function of soil parent material, climatic history,
time, phytogeography and chance this quickly spins into a need for some
level of comprehension of all scientific and technical knowledge which at
the very least would include elementary physics, inorganic chemistry,
physical chemistry, thermodynamic phase diagrams, intermolecular forces...
But why would one want to take animals as the sole focus of Natural
History ? Surely it should include all life forms, including the origin of
life, all aspects of Astronomy including the origin of stars, planets,
matter..., all aspects of Physics and (gasp) even all aspects of man-made
materials and devices.
In practice many, including myself, are still trying to grasp key
findings of 18th and 19th Century science so I expect the day when the
typical student of Natural History really understands the background of the
observed will be sometime after that elusive pot of Gold at the end of the
rainbow is located.
Yours truly, Dave Webster, Kentville
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