Plants and pigeonholes: Classification as a practice in American ecology

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 77-108

  Kohler, Robert E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Classification; Ecology; Field practice

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CLASSIFICATION; ECOLOGY; EDUCATION; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; NATURAL SCIENCE; PERSONNEL; PLANT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; UNITED STATES;

CLASSIFICATION; ECOLOGY; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; NATURAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES; PLANTS; RESEARCH PERSONNEL; UNITED STATES;

EID: 51249127992     PISSN: 19391811     EISSN: 1939182X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2008.38.1.77     Document Type: Review

References (103)

1. For example, Jared M. Diamond, "Zoological Classification System of a Primitive People," Science 151 (1966): 1102-04
2. Mark J. Plotkin, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (New York: Penguin Books, 1993)
3. Points of entry into the history of ethnotaxonomy include the ur-source, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963; original French ed., 1903)
4. Brent Berlin, Ethnological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
5. Eugene Hunn, "The Utilitarian Factor in Folk Biological Classification," American Anthropologist 84 (1982): 830-47
6. On the famous non-bird, see Ralph Bulmer, "Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands," Man 2 (1967): 5-25
7. Louis Dumont, Homo Heirarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980; original French ed., 1967)
8. and (on caste as right to harvest resources) Madhav Gadgil and K. C. Malhotra, "The Ecological Significance of Caste," in Social Ecology, ed. Ramchandra Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 27-42
9. Margo J. Anderson, ed., Encyclopedia of the U.S. Census (Washington: CQ Press, 2000), 292-94
10. also Margo Anderson Conk, "Occupational Classification in the United States Census: 1870-1940," Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 9 (1978): 111-30
11. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)
12. Classifications of the sciences have a rich and changing history. See R. G. A. Dolby, "Classification of the Sciences: The Nineteenth-Century Tradition," in Classifications in Their Social Contexts, ed. Roy F. Ellen and David Reason (London: Academic, 1979), 167-93
13. For example, James L. Larson, Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl von Linné (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)
14. Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)
15. Staffan Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel: Zur Begründung eines Natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707-1778) (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999)
16. Gordon R. McOuat, "Species, Rules and Meanings: The Politics of Language and the Ends of Definitions in Nineteenth-Century Natural History," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 27 (1996): 473-519
17. Gordon R. McOuat, "Cataloguing Power: Delineating 'Competent Naturalists' and the Meaning of Species in the British Museum," British Journal for the History of Science 34 (2001): 1-28
18. On nature's resistance to classi.ers see Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994)
19. A good source on taxonomic practice is Ernst Mayr, E. G. Linsley, and R. L. Usinger, Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953)
20. For example, Ursula Klein, ed., "Spaces of Classification," Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Preprint 240 (2003)
21. Ursula Klein, "Shifting Ontologies, Changing Classfications: Plant Materials from 1700 to 1830," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 36 (2005): 261-329
22. Matthew D. Eddy, "Scottish Chemistry, Classification and the Late Mineralogical Career of the 'Ingenious' Professor John Walker (1779-1805)," British Journal for the History of Science 37 (2004): 373-99
23. Martin Rudwick, "Minerals, Strata and Fossils," in Cultures of Natural History, ed. Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 266-86
24. Simon J. Knell, The Culture of English Geology, 1815-1851 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2000)
25. and Bo Gräslund, The Birth of Prehistoric Chronology: Dating Methods and Dating Systems in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavian Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
26. Robert E. Kohler, "Finders, Keepers: Collecting Sciences and Collecting Practice," History of Science 45 (2007): 1-27
27. Large digitized databases present some of the same problems of ordering and long-term maintenance as do collections of objects. See Geoffrey C. Bowker, "Biodiversity Datadiversity," Social Studies of Science 30 (2000): 642-83
28. For example, Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefévre, Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007)
29. Michael D. Gordin, "The Organic Roots of Mendeleev's Periodic Table," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 32:1 (2002): 263-90
30. Lissa Roberts, "Setting the Table: The Disciplinary Development of 18th Century Chemistry as Read Through the Changing Structure of its Tables," in The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument, ed. Peter Dear (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 99-132
31. Relevant overviews include Robert P. McIntosh, The Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
32. Joel B. Hagen, An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992)
33. and Thomas Söderqvist, The Ecologists: From Merry Naturalists to Saviours of the Nation (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1986)
34. On ecological classification see Malcolm Nicolson, "National Styles, Divergent Classifications: A Comparative Case Study from the History of French and American Plant Ecology," Knowledge and Society 8 (1989): 139-86
35. Robert H. Whittaker, "Classification of Natural Communities," Botanical Review 28 (1962): 1-239, on 72-73
36. also Victor E. Shelford, "Basic Principles of the Classification of Communities and Habitats and the Use of Terms," Ecology 13 (1932): 105-20
37. This and the following are summarized from Robert E. Kohler, All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)
38. Robert E. Kohler, All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950 (Ibid., esp. chap. 6
39. Nicolson, "National Styles" (ref. 10)
40. The following is based on Charles E. Moss, "The Fundamental Units of Vegetation: Historical Development of the Concepts of the Plant Association and the Plant Formation," New Phytologist 9 (1910): 18-53, on 24-32
41. Eugenius Warming, Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant-Communities, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 137-48
42. The following is based on Whittaker, "Classification" (ref. 11), 5-55
43. and Moss, "Fundamental Units" (ref. 15)
44. See also George E. Nichols, "A Working Basis for the Ecological Classification of Plant Communities," Ecology 4 (1923): 11-23, 154-79
45. Elizabeth G. Britton, review of The Phytogeography of Nebraska, vol. 1, General Survey, by Roscoe Pound and Frederic E. Clements in Science 8 (1898): 53-55, on 55
46. Charles Flahault and C. Schröter, "Rapport sur la nomenclature phytogéographique," Actes du 3me Congrès International Botanique (Brussels, 1910) I:131-64
47. Henry A. Gleason, "The Vegetation of the Inland Sand Deposits of Illinois," Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History 9 (1910): 23-174, on 41-42
48. Frederic E. Clements, "A System of Nomenclature for Phytogeography," Beiblatt zu den Botanischen Jahrbüchern no. 70, 31:4/5 (1902): 1-19, on 1-3
49. Roscoe Pound and Frederic E. Clements, review of "Observations on the Distribution of Plants along the Shore at Lake of the Woods," by Conway MacMillan, Minnesota Botanical Studies 1 (1897): 949-1023
50. American Naturalist 31 (1897): 980-84. MacMillan did plan larger surveys of Minnesota's three major watersheds but left ecology before he could carry them out
51. See MacMillan, The Metaspermae of the Minnesota Valley, Report of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, Botanical Series vol. 1 (1892), 2-4
52. Ronald C. Tobey, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895-1955 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)
53. On American natural history surveys in general see Kohler, All Creatures (ref. 12): chap. 2
54. see also Kaat Schulte Fischedick, "From Survey to Ecology: The Role of the British Vegetation Committee, 1904-1914," Journal of the History of Biology 33 (2000): 291-314
55. Roscoe Pound and Frederic Clements, The Phyto-geography of Nebraska. I. General Survey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Botanical Seminar, 1897; 2nd ed., 1900)
56. Frederic E. Clements, "A System of Nomenclature" (ref. 24), 3, 5-18
57. Frederic E. Clements, Plant Succession (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, publ. no. 242, 1916), 143
58. Pound and Clements, Phytogeography (ref. 27), 53-6, 169, 175-6, 313-21
59. Henry C. Cowles, "Ecological Relations of Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan," Botanical Gazette 27 (1899): 95-117, 167-202, 281-308, 361-91
60. Henry C. Cowles, "The Physiographic Ecology of Northern Michigan," Science 12 (1900): 708-9
61. Henry C. Cowles, "The Physiographic Ecology of Chicago and Vicinity: A Study of the Origin, Development, and Classification of Plant Societies," Botanical Gazette 31 (1901): 73-108, 145-82, 77-9, 84-5, 178, quote on 78
62. Cowles, "A New Treatise on Ecology," Botanical Gazette 27 (1899): 214-6
63. Also Eugene Cittadino, "'A Marvellous Cosmopolitan Preserve': The Dunes, Chicago, and the Dynamic Ecology of Henry Cowles," Perspectives on Science 1 (1993): 520-59
64. and Hagen, Entangled Bank (ref. 10), 16-22
65. Cowles, "New Treatise," (ref. 33), 216
66. Cowles, "Physiographic Ecology," (ref. 33), 81-3
67. Charles C. Adams et al., "An Ecological Survey in Northern Michigan," Report of the State Board of Geological Survey of Michigan (1905): 1-133
68. Adams et al., An Ecological Survey of Isle Royale, ibid., (1908): 1-468
69. and Alexander G. Ruthven et al., "A Biological Survey of the Sand Dune Region on the South Shore of Saginaw Bay, Michigan," Michigan Geological and Biological Survey Publication, no. 4 (1911)
70. Clements, Plant Succession (ref. 29), 3-7, 116-28
71. Frederic E. Clements, Plant Indicators (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, publ. no. 290, 1920): 105-14
72. Clements, "Nature and Structure of the Climax," Journal of Ecology 24 (1936): 252-84
73. Joel B. Hagen, "Organism and Environment: Frederic Clements's Vision of a Unified Physiological Ecology," in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988): 257-80
74. Clements, Plant Indicators (ref. 36), 114; a preliminary list is in Frederic E. Clements to Robert S. Woodward, 22 Dec 1916, CIW, folder Ecology misc
75. Frederic E. Clements, "Plant Formations and Forest Types," Proceedings of the Society for American Forestry 4 (1909): 50-63, on 54-55
76. On the IPE, see Kaat Schulte-Fischedick and Terry Shinn, "The International Phytogeographical Excursions, 1911-1923: Intellectual Convergence in Vegetation Science," Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 16 (1993): 107-31
77. [Edith Clements?], "Itineraries," n.d. [after 1944], FEC, box 111
78. [Edith Clements], "Itineraries," Plant Succession (ibid.; Frederic E. Clements to Daniel T. MacDougal, Dec 1915; n.d. [Apr 1916]; 9 May, 4 Sep, 11 Nov, 1916; all in FEC, box 79. Clements to MacDougal, Jan 1916, CIW, folder Ecology Name Plan Scope
79. Frederic E. Clements and John Weaver, Experimental Vegetation: The Relation of Climaxes to Climate (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, publ. no. 355, 1924), 5-9. The problem of these grasslands may have been what drove Clements to revise his views of plant associations
80. Malcolm Nicolson, "Henry Allen Gleason and the Individualistic Hypothesis: The Structure of a Botanist's Career," Botanical Review 56 (1990): 91-161, on 133-34
81. Gleason hints as much. See Henry A. Gleason, "The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association," Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53 (1926): 7-26, on 16
82. Henry A. Gleason, "A Botanical Survey of the Illinois River Valley Sand Region," Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory for Natural History 7 (1907): 149-94, on 149
83. Charles A. Hart, "Introduction," Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory for Natural History 7 (1907): 137-38
84. and Gleason, "Vegetation" (ref. 24), 23-24
85. Charles A. Hart and Henry A. Gleason, "On the Biology of the Sand Areas of Illinois," Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory for Natural History 7 (1907): 137-272, on 139-48
86. Henry A. Gleason, "Plant Associations and Their Classification: A Reply to Dr. Nichols," in Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of Plant Sciences, Ithaca, New York, 1926 (Menasha, WI: George Banta, 1929): vol. 1, 643-46, on 643
87. Gleason had never liked Cowles's physiographic system, because it described a generic physiographic history and not actual histories in real places; see Henry A. Gleason, "The Ecological Relations of the Invertebrate Fauna of Isle Royale, Michigan," in Adams et al., Ecological Survey (ref. 35), 57-58
88. and Henry A. Gleason, "The Structure and Development of the Plant Association," Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 44 (1917): 463-81, on 473-4
89. Gleason, "Structure and Development" (ref. 56), 463-68
90. Gleason, "Individualistic Concept" (ref. 50), 13-16, 19-22, 23-25
91. Henry A. Gleason, "Further Views on the Succession-Concept," Ecology 8 (1927): 299-326, on 316
92. Gleason, "The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association," American Midland Naturalist 21 (1939): 92-110
93. Nicolson, "Henry Allen Gleason" (ref. 49)
94. and Robert P. McIntosh, "H. A. Gleason, 'Individualistic Ecologist,' 1882-1975: His Contributions to Ecological Theory," Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 102 (1975): 253-73
95. also Gleason, "Individualistic Concept" (1926) (ref. 50), 7-8, 15-16. "Consocies" are patches within an association that comprise nearly pure stands of one of the association's dominant species
96. Arthur G. Vestal, "Phytogeography of the Eastern Mountain-front in Colorado," Botanical Gazette 68 (1919): 153-93, 182-86
97. Arthur G. Vestal, "A Geophysical Basis for Plant Geography," 25 Dec 1917, AGV, box 4, folder 1917
98. Homer L. Shantz to Arthur G. Vestal, 31 Jan 1913, and Vestal to Shantz, 21 Feb 1913, both in AGV, box 2. Homer L. Shantz, "A Study of the Vegetation of the Mesa Region East of Pike's Peak, I: Structure of the Formation," Botanical Gazette 42 (1906): 16-47
99. Vestal, "Geophysical Basis" (ref. 66), 3-5
100. Arthur G. Vestal, "Segregation of Vegetation into Associations and into Less Extensive Units," Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 15:4 (1934): 31
101. Vestal, "Fluctuations of Vegetation-components During Twenty-two Years," Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America ibid., 16:4 (1935): 32
102. Robert E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
103. Frederic E. Clements, "Formation and Succession Herbaria," University of Nebraska Studies 4 (1904): 329-55