Mark A. Ragan

Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains (eBook, ePUB)

The History of High-Level Biological Classification

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A generation or two before Socrates, thinkers classified the world's organisms into three categories: plants, animals, and man. However, Aristotle recognized that some organisms, such as sponges and sea-fans, share properties of both plants and animals. These became known as zoophytes. Since then, scientists have explored the idea of a "third kingdom." In Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains, leading molecular systematist Mark A. Ragan offers a history of the idea that there is more to the living world than plants and animals. Progressing chronologically through philosophical, religious, literary, and other pre-scientific traditions, Ragan traces how transgressive creatures such as sponges, corals, algae, fungi, and diverse microscopic beings have been described, categorized, and understood throughout history. The book considers their appearance in early Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions; myths, legends, and traveller's tales; occult literature; and more. Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains also details how the concept of a "third kingdom" has evolved throughout the history of scientific botany and zoology, and continues to evolve up to the present day. Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains features original translations of passages from key historical texts, many of which have never appeared in English before. It also draws on the most recent and reliable scientific literature. A sweeping, interdisciplinary study, Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains is essential reading for students and scholars of the history of biological classification and anyone interested in the history of ideas about the natural world.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Juli 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780197643051
• Artikelnr.: 68341481

Autorenporträt

Mark A. Ragan is an emeritus professor at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland. From 2000 to 2014, he served as founding head of IMB's Genomics and Computational Biology division. He concurrently served as founding director of the Australian Research Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and later co-founded QFAB Informatics. Ragan is co-author of A Biochemical Phylogeny of the Protists (Academic Press, 1978) and numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Cell, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Microbiology, PNAS, and more. He is a former president and an honorary lifetime member of the International Seaweed Association and currently senior fellow of the Australian Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Society.

Inhaltsangabe

* List of Illustrations * Preface * Acknowledgement: copyrighted material * Chapter 1. The Earliest Nature * Primitive concepts of natural entities * Early figurative art * Symbolic language and folk taxonomies * Creation myths * Animal deities and anthropomorphized plants * Transformation and metamorphosis * Metempsychosis, reincarnation, and anamnesis * Transmutation and transubstantiation * Chapter 2. Eastern Nature * The Indian subcontinent * Buddhism * China: the common tradition * China: Confucianism * China: Taoism * China: Mohism * Japan * The "three kingdoms of nature" are not rooted in prehistory * Chapter 3. Philosophical Nature * Hellenic philosophical traditions before Socrates * The Pythagoreans * The Eleatics * The atomists * Empedocles * Diogenes of Apollonia * Socrates * Plato * Aristotle * Theophrastus * Stoic and later triadic divisions of soul or beings * Scepticism * Envoi * Chapter 4. Utilitarian Nature * Lucretius * Seneca * Pliny the Elder * Herbals and pharmacopias * Early medical texts * Bestiaries * Summary * Chapter 5. Neoplatonic Nature * Philo of Alexandria * Calvenus Taurus * Plotinus * Porphyry and Anatolius * Iamblichus and Dexippus * Themistius * Athens and Alexandria * Ammonius Hermiæ and John Philoponus * Elias and David * Summary: philosophical themes within Neoplatonism * Chapter 6. Christian Nature * Early theologians and polemicists * Origen * Nemesius * The Cappadocian Fathers * Augustine * Pseudo-Dionysius * Boëthius * John of Damascus * Summary * Chapter 7. Islamic and Jewish Nature * Islam and the translation of Hellenic philosophy into Arabic * Arabic natural history, an-Nä
m, and al-J
i
* Al-Kind
, al-F
r
b
, and al-Mas
d
* The Ikhw
n al-
af
* Al-B
r
n
, Ibn S
n
, al-Ghaz
l
, Ibn Rushd, and al-Abhar
* Ni
am
Ar
z
, al-Qazwini, and later authors *
ufiyya * The Jewish philosophical tradition: Ibn Daud and Maimonides * Kabbalah * Duran, Alemanno, and Albotini * The rediscovery of Aristotle's natural history * Chapter 8. Monastic and Scholastic Nature * Cassiodorus to Hrabanus Maurus * Eriugena * Anselm, Peter Abelard, and Peter Lombard * Adelard and Berachya * Hildegard and Marius * The School of Chartres * Bernard Silvestris and John Blund * Robert Grosseteste * Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomæus Anglicus, and Vincent of Beauvais * Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas * Bonaventure and Dante * The Fourteenth century * Nicholas of Cusa * From scholasticism to humanism * Chapter 9. Nature's Mystic Book * Oracles and mysteries * Thrice-great Hermes * Universal truths and hidden meanings * Gnostic texts * Macrocosm and microcosm * Alchemy * The Kit
b Sirr al-khal
qa * The Sirr al-asrar or Secretum secretorum * Magic * From J
bir to the Renaissance * Three Renaissance humanists: Ficino, Pico, and Agrippa * Paracelsus and the alchemists * Bruno, Fludd, and the nature-mystics * Summary and questions * Chapter 10. Allegory, Myth, and Superstition * Allegory * Beings with exaggerated features * Chimæras: the borametz * Active transformation: the barnacle-goose-tree * Return from the dead * Monsters and marvels * Ancients and Moderns * Chapter 11. The Return of the Zoophytes * Dictionaries * Guillaume Budé: Roman law (1508) * Otto Brunfels: materia medica (1534) * François Rabelais: literature in the vernacular (1546) * Jean Bodin: political theory (1576) * Jacopo Zabarella: Aristotelian logic (1606) * Johann Thomas Freig: Ramist natural history (1579) * Robert Burton: English vernacular (1621) * Juan Eusebio Nieremberg: baroque nature (1635) * David Person: rare and excellent matters (1635) * Henry More: the Spirit of Nature (1682) * Concluding comments * Chapter 12. Plants and Animals * Herbals (from 1475) * The rise of scientific botany 1: 1490-1580 * Andrea Cesalpino * The rise of scientific botany 2: 1580-1680 * Medieval and early Renaissance animal books * The rise of scientific zoology 1: 1520-1550 * The rise of scientific zoology 2: the momentous 1550s * The rise of scientific zoology 3: the encyclopædists 1560-1660 * The rise of scientific zoology 4: curiosities and specialization * Zoophyta: a fourth division of nature? * Plants and animals in 1680 * Chapter 13. The Most Wretched Creatures * Multiple worlds * Invisible airborne seeds * Leibniz and monads * Leeuwenhoek and Joblot: little animals observed * Buffon, Needham, and Spallanzani: spontaneous generation * A class of their own? * Summary: one hundred years of little animals * Chapter 14. Continuity in the Living World * The Great Chain under attack * Richard Bradley: A philosophical account * Corals: an ancient enigma resolved * Hydra: a new enigma * Charles Bonnet: the canonical Great Chain of Being * The Great Chain after 1780 * Chapter 15. Classifying God's Handiwork * Magnol and Tournefort * Ray and natural theology * Linnæus * What, then, are fungi? * Adanson, Scopoli, and de Jussieu * Zoophyta as animals * Summary * Chapter 16. Beyond the End of the Chain * Nature as a map * Nature as a network * Nature as a polygon or Easter egg * Nature as a branched tree * Nature as a spiral * Nature as a circle * Quinarian nature * Summary * Chapter 17. From Histoire Naturelle to Anatomie and Morphologie * Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert * Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton * Jean-Baptiste Lamarck * Georges Cuvier * Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire * Félix Vicq-d'Azyr: le règne vivant * Jean Guillaume Bruguière: a new arrangement of Vermes * Julien-Joseph Virey: evolution along parallel chains * Pierre-Jean-François Turpin: végéto-animaux * Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville: infusoria as an appendage * Henri Milne-Edwards: embryology and classification * Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent: Règne Psychodiaire * Summary: France * Chapter 18. Naturphilosophie, Polygastric Animalcules, and Cells * Johann Gottfried Herder * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe * Immanuel Kant: transcendental idealism * German Romanticism * Naturphilosophie * Lorenz Oken * Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus * Alexander von Humboldt * Karl Ernst von Baer * Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg * Cell theory * The last Naturphilosoph: Carl Gustav Carus * Summary: Germany * Chapter 19: Green Matter, Zoospores, and Diatoms * Simple animals, simple plants * How, then, do algae reproduce? * Case study 1: Priestley's green matter * Case study 2: zoospores * Case study 3: metamorphosis * Benjamin Gaillon * Friedrich Traugott Kützing * Case study 4: diatoms and desmids * Summary * Chapter 20: Temples of Nature * Britain: three Linnæan kingdoms * Erasmus Darwin * Natural theology * Richard Owen * Vestiges of the natural history of Creation * Charles Darwin * John Hogg * Thomas B. Wilson and John Cassin * Popular natural histories in Victorian Britain * Summary: Britain * Chapter 21: Ernst Haeckel and Protista * Die Radiolarien (1862) * Generelle Morphologie (1866) * New classes of Protista * Sponges and gastraea theory * Monera, protozoa, and protophyta * Das Protistenreich (1878) * Protists and Histones * Four kingdoms of life * The protozoological tradition * The phycological tradition * The bacteriological tradition * The protistological tradition * Summary: Haeckel and Protista * Chapter 22: Beyond Three Kingdoms * Kingdoms and superkingdoms * Four kingdoms (Copeland, 1938-1956) * Five kingdoms (Whittaker, 1969) * Other high-level proposals to 1975 * The rise of cellular ultrastructure * Eukaryogenesis 1: Natura facit saltum * Eukaryogenesis 2: science may discover ten * Summary * Chapter 23: Genes, Genomes, and Domains * Introduction: the molecular basis of heredity * Molecular phylogenetics before sequences * The ribosomal RNA Tree of Life * The molecular consensus erodes * Thinking laterally about genomes * Genomes and pan-genomes * Genomes from the environment * Retrospective: the domains of life * Last words on kingdoms, empires, and domains * Appendix: Victorian popular natural histories * Acronyms * Notes * References * Index of names * Index of subjects