From The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams
From The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams |
Conrad Gesner (sometimes Konrad, sometimes Gessner) was arguably the greatest naturalist of his age. The science he practiced might seem strange by modern standards, but the disciplines he worked with were more broadly defined in the 16th century than they are today.
Between 1551 and 1558, Gesner published a four-volume masterwork, History of Animals. The first volume covered four-footed animals, the second covered amphibians, the third covered birds, and the fourth covered fishes and other aquatic animals. He incorporated observations of both classical scholars — relying heavily on a bestiary, Physiologus, likely dating from the fourth century AD — and his contemporaries, some of them obscure experts. His work was possible in a large part due to the web of correspondence he established with leading naturalists throughout Europe who, in addition to their ideas, sent him plants, animals and gems. At a time of extreme religious tension (his own Protestantism added History of Animals to the Catholic Church's Index of prohibited books), Gesner maintained friendships on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide.
Exceedingly well read, Gesner even attempted to establish a "universal library" of all books in existence. The project might sound quaint to the modern mind, but Gesner invested tremendous energy in the project, sniffing through remote libraries as well as the collections of the Vatican Library and catalogs of printers and booksellers. In the words of science writer Anna Pavord, "He was a one-man search engine, a 16th-century Google with the added bonus of critical evaluation." To his contemporaries, who had never even heard of Google, he was known as "the Swiss Pliny."
When Gesner doubted the opinions he relayed in his writings, he prudently said so. Of the multi-headed hydra, for instance, he observed, "ears, tongues, noses, and faces are inconsistent with the nature of serpents." What would strike a modern reader as strange, however, was his inclusion of proverbs related to the animal in question, along with any appearances it made in the Bible, pagan mythology, or even Egyptian hieroglyphs. In other words, he included every piece of information he could find about the animal, useful or not. But if the natural history of Gesner's day encompassed every possible way in which people related to animals, his inclusive approach to his research was entirely appropriate. What Gesner didn't include were many direct observations of his own; science would not emphasize experiment and observation until later.
 From The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick |
Just as Gesner's approach to natural history might surprise a modern reader, it likewise surprised 16th-century readers with an innovation: pictures. Previously, most (not all) natural history texts were just that — texts. Gesner, in contrast, included beautiful woodcuts in his. (He credited the artist Lucas Schan of Strasbourg, but the naturalist probably collaborated with a few other artists and drew his own illustrations as well.) The woodcuts not only made his work more appealing, but also less ambiguous as he recognized the value of both words and pictures to relay information. Plant illustrations in Gesner's works included all aspects of the plant, including magnified seeds and pictures of bulbs. He continued this tradition in his book On Fossil Objects. In it, the similarities between a fossil crab and a living specimen are easy to see. For a lucky few, the pictures could even come in color, but this was a time-consuming and expensive process as it had to be done by hand.
The full title of Gesner's final book was A Book on Fossil Objects, Chiefly Stones and Gems, their Shapes and Appearances. In Gesner's time, a fossil was any interesting object found in the ground, including items of inorganic origin. He divided the fossils he described into 15 categories, in a classification scheme that today seems a little odd:
Such a classification system sounds pretty odd now, but Gesner apparently liked specific, thorough categories and titles. In 1556, he published a pamphlet entitled Little Commentary on Rare and Admirable Plants Called Lunariae, Either Because They Glow at Night or for Some Other Reason.
Gesner intended for On Fossil Objects to be a prelude to a much larger work, but the year he published it proved to be his last. In 1565, he died of the plague. According to legend, when he knew his time was near, he asked to be taken to his study where he had spent so much of his life, to die among his favorite books. At the time of his death, Gesner had published 72 books, and written 18 more unpublished manuscripts, including a work on plants not published until centuries after his death.
For more information:
Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary
The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick
Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts by Conrad Gesner
The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams
The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord
The Science of Describing by Brian W. Ogilvie
The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley
Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy
Science and the Secrets of Nature by William Eamon
Wonders and the Order of Nature by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park
The Lying Stones of Marrakech by Stephen Jay Gould
Cabinets of Curiosities by Patrick Mauriès
Matters of Exchange by Harold J. Cook
Renaissance Beasts edited by Erica Fudge
The Lore of the Unicorn by Odell Shepard
The Pope's Elephant by Silvio Bedini
Seen|Unseen by Martin Kemp
"Eggs and Exegesis" by Martin Kemp in Nature Magazine, April 13, 2006 issue
"Foils and Fakes: The Hydra in Giambattista Basile's Dragon-Slayer Tale, 'Lo mercante'" by Suzanne Magnanini in Marvels & Tales Magazine, 2005
Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated November 3, 2007