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SUMMARY:Deadwood taxonomies: trees of nature before evolution - Petter Hel
 lström (Uppsala University)
DTSTART:20150309T130000Z
DTEND:20150309T141500Z
UID:TALK57291@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Margaret Carlyle
DESCRIPTION:In the late 18th and early 19th centuries\, as more and more n
 aturalists decried 'artificial' taxonomies and went in search of the true\
 , inherent order of nature\, some found themselves arguing for trees. This
 \, importantly\, had nothing to do with evolution. It was rather that the 
 tree\, already employed for centuries in genealogy and logic\, made it pos
 sible to expand the _scala naturae_ into a bundle\, providing for a more c
 omplex system. The case is exemplified with the 'botanical tree' of August
 in Augier (1801)\, often discussed as the first tree in systematics and as
  a precursor to evolutionary trees. The biography of Augier\, recently exc
 avated by myself and colleagues in France\, aligns with his vision of natu
 re as static\, beautiful and perfectly ordered: Augustin Augier de Favas w
 as a priest of the Oratorian order. In this talk\, I argue that early syst
 ematic trees\, including that of Augier\, really were deadwood\, both in t
 he sense that they were representations of unchanging nature\, but also be
 cause they did not lead anywhere.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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