Natural history
333 BCE to Now
Natural history, which begins with Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who analyze the diversity of the natural world, is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study.
It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in science magazines than in academic journals.
Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms.
That is a very broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines, so while natural history dates historically from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the medieval Arabic world, through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's field is more of a cross discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences.
For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists and scientific knowledge of many specialty sciences.
Related Events
Showing 3 events out of 3 total
Gaius Plinius Secundus, called Pliny the Elder, writes the monumental Historia naturalis, the earliest truly encyclopedic work, published in 77 as a series of anthologies concerned with such scientific and technical topics as anthropology, botany, cosmography, metallurgy, psychology, pharmacology, and zoology.
Mark Catesby, an English naturalist, begins part publication in London of The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants ... together with their descriptions in English and French, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America, and the first work of natural history to use folio-size colored plates.
Catesby had learned how to etch the plates himself.
The Imperial Natural History Museum (German: K.k. Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum), begun in 1871, has its grand opening on August 10, 1889, at the Vienna Hofburg.
The museum will counts one hundred and seventy-five thousand visitors from August 13 to the end of December.