Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Cabinet of Natural History

This research seminar is concerned with all aspects of the history of natural history and the field and environmental sciences. The regular programme of papers and discussions takes place over lunch on Mondays. In addition, the Cabinet organises a beginning-of-year fungus hunt and occasional expeditions to sites of historical and natural historical interest, and holds an end-of-year garden party.

Michaelmas Term 2009

Seminars are held on Mondays at 1pm in Seminar Room 1. You are welcome to bring your lunch with you.

Organised by Susannah Gibson.

12 October Nick Jardine (HPS, Cambridge)
Fungi in history
19 October Ruth Horry (HPS, Cambridge)
'Botany of the air': experiments, airships and agriculture in 1930
26 October Fungus Hunt
2 November Anne Secord (HPS, Cambridge)
Coming to attention: observing nature at the edges during the Napoleonic Wars
9 November Jamie Lorimer (King's College London)
After the king of beasts: the embodied histories of elephant hunting in mid-nineteenth century Ceylon
16 November Toby Musgrave
Head gardeners: the forgotten heroes of horticulture
23 November Adelene Buckland (Cambridge Victorian Studies Group)
Lyell's plots
30 November Martin Rudwick (University of California, San Diego)
Reflections on re-treading Darwin's 'gigantic blunder' in Glen Roy