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Pascal Eitler, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany, German History, Volume 28, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 588–589, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghq080
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Extract
Lynn Nyhart's wide-ranging, closely argued and very readable study is much more than the history of an important but isolated scientific concept: the author does not merely discuss the emergence and popularization of the concept of the biological community (Lebensgemeinschaft) in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Rather, she opens up a striking new perspective at the intersection between scientific, cultural and social history. For Nyhart, the concept of Lebensgemeinschaft, coined in the 1880s by the German zoologist, Karl Möbius, marks one of the most important turning-points in biological and zoological thought and in the natural history discourses of the nineteenth century. Scientific understandings of nature and the natural order were no longer formed by the classifications and taxonomies of (dead) animals. Rather, scientists placed new emphasis on observing (living) animals existing in their natural habitats. Hence, Nyhart talks of the ‘rise of a biological perspective’. This biological or ecological perspective was less concerned with the evolution of species through the ages and more with how living creatures interacted in concrete situations in identifiable locations. One of the strengths of this volume is its analysis of how this functionalist conception of nature established itself not only within academic circles influenced by Möbius but also among extremely influential reform groups operating in zoos, schools, museums and the wider scientific communities. Thus it was not only the researching of animals but also their presentation and representation that changed, as evidenced by such innovations as their appearing in ‘naturalistic’ enclosures in zoos and in ‘authentic’ reproductions in museums.
