Composing the World: Emerson and the Cabinet of Natural History

1989 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Dant
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The World

Bringing the Real World of Science to Children: A Partnership of the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.

From Silent Spring to The Frog of War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Skelly
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Rachel Carson ◽  
Chemical Agents ◽  
Silent Spring ◽  
The World ◽  
History Information ◽  
Wildlife Populations ◽  
The Impact

This chapter presents two examples to demonstrate that natural history is the necessary basis of any reliable understanding of the world. More than a half century ago, Rachel Carson revolutionized the public’s view of pesticides. The foundation of her success was the careful use of natural history data, collated from across North America. The examples she assembled left little doubt that DDT and other pesticides were causing a widespread decline in birds. More recently, the case for the impact of atrazine on wildlife was based on laboratory experiments, without the advantage of natural history observations. For atrazine, natural history observations now suggest that other chemical agents are more likely to be responsible for feminization of wildlife populations. Developing expectations for scientists to collect natural history information can help to avoid over-extrapolating lab results to wild populations, a tendency often seen when those lab results conform to preconceptions about chemicals in the environment.

On the Nomenclature of the Vinegar Eelworm

1927 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
The World

This eelworm, only just visible to the naked eye, and quite common in vinegar in all parts of the world, has long been known to zoologists, and indeed was an object of keen interest and discussion to the naturalists of the seventeenth century. Petrus Borellus [3], for instance, enthusiastic over the recent adoption of the microscope for researches in natural history, published in 1656 his “Observationum Microcospicarum Centuria,” in which he leads off with a note “De Vermibus aceti.” In the twelfth edition of the “Systema Naturae” (1767), Linnaeus included a species redivivum in that final genus of the Regnum Animale so appropriately named Chaos. This species of animal he says, “Habitat in Aceto & Glutine Bibliopegorum.”.

scholarly journals NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Dimítri De Araújo Costa ◽  
Nuno Gomes ◽  
Harold Cantallo ◽  
Carlos Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Local Fauna ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study

Society in general is distant from scientific culture, it is required to bring scientific knowledge closer to the population. In this context, an effective and attractive way for scientific dissemination is the establishment of natural history museums, which are institutions of knowledge, displaying the past. Natural history museums have the natural world as their object of study; and their collections may contain the most diverse types of materials (local and/or from various parts of the world), such as zoological, botanical, geological, archaeological, among others. Scientific collections are the largest and most important source of authoritative biodiversity data, contributing to studies of biodiversity composition, evolutionary (morphological and genetic), biogeographical, phenological, as well as geological. The materials present in these collections may serve for temporal comparison, being useful to produce predictive models. Likewise, they have a fundamental role in safeguarding type specimens, i.e. the first organisms identified to describe and name a new species. In addition, there is the component available to visitors in general, in order to raise public awareness on the preservation of the local fauna and flora and of other places in the world. In this way, the museums serve both the academic-scientific public and visitors who come to these sites for recreational purposes. It is intended to promote, in Vila Nova de Cerveira, the Natural History Museum of the Iberian Peninsula - NatMIP (“Museu de História Natural da Península Ibérica”), which intends to collect materials for scientific purposes, mainly Iberian.

scholarly journals Forms of Repetition in ‘The Robins Nest’

Romanticism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Sarah Houghton-Walker
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This essay uses Clare's interest in birds as a lens to focus its examination of the way his poetry exhibits a particular kind of attention to attention. More particularly, it explores various ways in which repetition functions in Clare's poem, ‘The Robins Nest’. The essay argues that the tension between specifics and generalities which inevitably arises in the construction of natural history, and the gap between natural history and poetry, are significantly negotiated in ‘The Robins Nest’ through the poet's use of forms of repetition. These in turn both invite the reader's attention to the world and represent something of the quality of the poet's attention as he makes his own observations.

Cosmos: The Universe Translated

2018 ◽  
pp. 187-232
Author(s):  
Alison E. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
Physical Description ◽  
The World ◽  
Terrestrial Life ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

This chapter is devoted to Humboldt’s last, great work Cosmos. This multi-volume ‘Sketch of a Physical Description of the World’ ranged encyclopaedically from the darkest corners of space to the smallest forms of terrestrial life, describing the larger systems at work in the natural world. But, as British reviewers were swift to query, where was God in Humboldt’s mapping of the universe? Appearing on the market in 1846, just a year after Robert Chambers’ controversial Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Humboldt’s Cosmos unavoidably underwent close scrutiny. Hitherto overlooked correspondence between Humboldt and Edward Sabine shows how the Sabines deliberately reoriented the second volume of the English translation for Longman/Murray explicitly to include references to the ‘Creator’ and thus restore Humboldt’s reputation. The fourth volume of the Longman edition on terrestrial magnetism – Edward Sabine’s specialism – included additions endorsed by Humboldt which made Sabine appear as co-writer alongside the great Prussian scientist, and Cosmos a more obviously ‘English’ product. Otté, who produced the rival translation for Bohn, was initially under pressure herself to generate ‘original’ work that differed from its rival, producing a version of a work that would remain central to scientific thought well up to the end of the nineteenth century.

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