Web Of Nature
by Roos, Anna MarieFormat: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2011-08-31
Publisher(s): Brill Academic Pub
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Summary
This first full-length biography of Dr. Martin Lister (1639-1712), vice-president of the Royal Society, Royal Physician, and the first arachnologist and conchologist, provides an unprecedented picture of a seventeenth-century virtuoso. Lister is recognized for his discovery of ballooning spiders and as the father of conchology, but it is less well known that he invented the histogram, provided Newton with alloys, and donated the first significant natural history collections to the Ashmolean Museum. Just as Lister was the first to make a systematic study of spiders and their webs, this biography is the first to analyze the significant webs of knowledge, patronage, and familial and gender relationships that governed his life as a scientist and physician.
Author Biography
Anna Marie Roos Ph.D. (1997) in History, University of Colorado, is the Lister Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She has published extensively on early modern English science including The Salt of the Earth: Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Chymistry in England, 1650-1750 (Brill, 2007).
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. xi |
| Acknowledgements | p. xvii |
| The Birth of a Naturalist, 1663-1668 | |
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| Early Life and Letters, 1639-1663 | p. 15 |
| Introduction | p. 15 |
| Early Influences | p. 19 |
| The Birth of a Naturalist | p. 38 |
| Lister's Years at Cambridge, 1655-1663 | p. 42 |
| French Connection: The Voyage to Montpellier, 1663-1666 | p. 55 |
| Introduction | p. 55 |
| Arrival into France | p. 58 |
| An Introduction to John Ray | p. 69 |
| Lister's Early Contributions to Natural History, 1666-1668: The Influence of John Ray | p. 77 |
| Lister and his Views of Natural History | p. 77 |
| Debates About Spontaneous Generation | p. 88 |
| The Resignation of a Fellowship | p. 94 |
| In Location at the Periphery of the Web, In the Mind at its Very Center: Lister's Years in York (1669-1683) | |
| Spider Threads and a Tangled Web of Misunderstanding, 1668-1671 | p. 101 |
| Introduction | p. 101 |
| The "Ballooning" Debate over Arachnid Flight | p. 102 |
| Taxonomic Questions and Doubts | p. 116 |
| A Waning Friendship | p. 124 |
| "My Dear Hart": Lister's Marriage to Hannah Parkinson and his Medical Practice in York | p. 131 |
| Introduction | p. 131 |
| A Doctor in York | p. 138 |
| Lister and the Royal Society's Debates about Plant Circulation in the 1670s | p. 151 |
| Introduction | p. 151 |
| The Royal Society and the Circulation of Sap | p. 153 |
| The Argument with Nehemiah Grew | p. 160 |
| Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Lister, Ray, Crinoids, and the Fossil Debate in the Royal Society | p. 167 |
| Introduction | p. 167 |
| Lister and "Rock-plants" | p. 171 |
| Chemical Theories of Fossil Formation | p. 182 |
| "All that Glitters": Martin Lister and Fools' Gold, 1677-1684 | p. 185 |
| Introduction | p. 185 |
| The Chemistry of Pyrites | p. 190 |
| Pyrites and the Quarrel over Spa Waters | p. 195 |
| Pyrites and Natural History | p. 200 |
| Petrifaction Within the Body: The Production of Gall and Bladder Stones | p. 209 |
| Formation of Magnetic Stones in the Body | p. 215 |
| A Speculum of Chemical Practice: Lister, Newton, and Telescopic Mirrors | p. 221 |
| Introduction | p. 221 |
| The Chemistry of the Glass of Antimony | p. 223 |
| Antimony, the Royal Society, and Newton's Mirrors | p. 226 |
| Antimony, Cawk, and Newtonian Alchemy | p. 232 |
| The Move to London | p. 234 |
| At the Web's Center: Lister in London, The Royal Society, and the Production of Masterworks: 1684-1692 | |
| Lister's London Beginnings: Virtuoso, Antiquarian, and Benefactor | p. 245 |
| Introduction | p. 245 |
| Medical Meteorology and the Histogram | p. 248 |
| Lister's Quest for Medical Qualifications and his Antiquarian Enterprise | p. 260 |
| The Art of Science: The Historiae Conchyliorum and the Historia Piscium | p. 281 |
| Introduction | p. 281 |
| The Path to the Historiae Conchyliorum | p. 282 |
| Slugs, Fishes, and Snails, but no Puppy Dog Tails: The Making of Masterworks in Conchology and Ichthyology | p. 293 |
| The Historia Piscium | p. 318 |
| Time Spins Away: 1692-1712 | |
| Publication and Prestige: The Sex Exercitationes Medicinales and the Royal College of Physicians | p. 335 |
| Introduction | p. 335 |
| Professional Prestige and New Ontologies of Medicine and Natural History | p. 340 |
| Journeys and Losses | p. 360 |
| The Spice of Life: A Journey to Paris and a Cookery Book | p. 375 |
| Introduction | p. 375 |
| The Journey to Paris | p. 376 |
| Lister's Last Years | p. 395 |
| Epilogue: Lister's Portrait and the Tragedy of Burwell Park | p. 421 |
| Bibliography | p. 427 |
| Index | p. 465 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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