Thesis ID: CBB001561515

Conversations and Contrasting Views: An Examination of the Development of Paleobotany in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1804--1895 (2007)

unapi

Digrius, Dawn Mooney (Author)


Drew University
Kohn, David


Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisor: Kohn, David
Physical Details: 243 pp.
Language: French

This project explores the history of paleobotany during the nineteenth century and focuses on the internal structure debate; a scientific debate that defined this nascent science from the 1830s to the 1890s. The debate arose when cambial activity was observed in certain fossil plants that challenged existing modes of classification. Two individuals defined the poles of the debate, Adolphe Theodore Brongniart (1801-1876) of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris and William Crawford Williamson (1816-1895) of Owens College, Manchester. Brongniart attained international acclaim for his paleobotanical researches through his connection to the museum and his mentor, Georges Cuvier. He had also established in 1822 a systematic classification scheme for fossil plants and was considered from that moment forward the highest authority on the subject of fossil plants. Williamson, who began his paleobotanical career illustrating Lindley and Hutton's Fossil Flora, eventually rose to scientific prominence in paleobotany as a result of the debate. Williamson disagreed with Brongniart's classification based on his own microscopic observations of carboniferous fossil plant specimens. Brongniart and Williamson held vastly different views as to where certain vascular cryptogamic fossils lie taxonomically, based on the presence or absence of a cambium. This project teases out the spheres of interaction for both Brongniart and Williamson, in order to understand how both they and other paleobotanists viewed the internal structure debate and how theoretical biases and social networks influenced positions on either side. In addition, this project considers not only scientific achievements, but also how social ties, nationalism and evolutionary theory played a role in the practice of paleobotany during its development. By focusing on an internal debate that spanned most of the period of inquiry and crossed international borders, this examination reveals the scientific achievements in paleobotany, but also speaks to the practice of the science through its social dimensions. The project provides a rich source of consolidated information for subsequent scholars of paleobotany and other historians of science. More significantly, it presents not only what paleobotanists sought to explain, but reveals the cultures in which these practitioners of paleobotany were intimately entrenched.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/06 (2007). Pub. no. AAT 3268691.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561515/

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Authors & Contributors
Dowe, John Leslie
Wilding, Richard
Maroske, Sara
Cleal, Christopher J.
Wilding, R.
Townsend, Annette
Concepts
Botany
Paleontology
Paleobotany
Classification in biology
Fossils
Biology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
17th century
20th century
18th century
Places
Melbourne (Victoria, Australia)
Hanover (Germany)
Scotland
Argentina
United States
Russia
Institutions
Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne
University of Sheffield
University of Manchester
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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