Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?: How eighteenth-century science disrupted the natural order

by Susannah Gibson

Since the time of Aristotle, there had been a clear divide between the three kingdoms of animal, vegetable, and mineral. But by the eighteenth century, biological experiments, and the wide range of new creatures coming to Europe from across the world, challenged these neat divisions. Abraham Trembley found that freshwater polyps grew into complete individuals when cut. This shocking discovery raised deep was it a plant or an animal? And this was not theonly conundrum. What of coral? Was it a rock or a living form? Did plants have sexes, like animals? The boundaries appeared to blur. And what did all this say about the nature of life itself? Were animals and plants soul-less, mechanical forms, as Descartes suggested? The debates raging acrossscience played into some of the biggest and most controversial issues of Enlightenment Europe. In this book, Susannah Gibson explains how a study of pond slime could cause people to question the existence of the soul; observation of eggs could make a man doubt that God had created the world; how the discovery of the Venus fly-trap was linked to the French Revolution; and how interpretations of fossils could change our understanding of the Earth's history. Using rigorous historical research,and a lively and readable style, this book vividly captures the big concerns of eighteenth-century science. And the debates concerning the divisions of life did not end there; they continue to have resonances in modern biology.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2015

About the author

Dr Susannah Gibson is an Affiliated Scholar of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge on the history of the life sciences of the eighteenth century, a master’s degree in the history of nineteenth-century science, and a bachelor’s degree in experimental physics.

Reviews

[Peter Geyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I acquired this book more on the basis of its subtitle than the title itself, which aroused my curiosity in any place. I knew little about this topic in the history of science and of course had played the "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" Game as a child, in the dim, dark past. There was a bit of fun and energy to that, and Susannah Gibson mentions the game and the continued use of the categories, notwithstanding its technical inadequacies.

As an aside, this illustrates the use and limitation of models, which don't have to be true, but useful, although obviously there are limits to how untruthful they can be, as forays into fields like psychology, organisations and economics easily demonstrate. A point here is to know when your model is at the edge of plausibility, or even a far distance from it.

Gibson demonstrates this in outlining the theme of discussions on the nature of life in her selected period, although she starts, reasonably enough, with Aristotle. The dubious presumptions of Linnaeus, those who had a materialist perspective, those who needed (for personal belief or safety reasons) to place God in their model: the author points out the general acceptance of the Genesis view of creation, notwithstanding what is now known about the origins of the text and its several authors and their inconsistent perspectives.

Various researchers, their methods and the politics of science of the time are also engaged with, and several comments are made relating some issues to debates on where life begins and who/what is accountable for it, which extend to the present day.

This book was originally a PhD thesis, but unlike others of its ilk, this is more than readable. The author follows the current trend of injecting personal experience into her narrative and with great effect. The openness and fluidity of the writing as a whole is a bonus in what might have been a dry text and it's clear Gibson has grasped her topic personally and intellectually. I have to admit that it was a much better read than I anticipated and took it with me when driving to and from a national conference held interstate.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very cerebral look at the most commonly used classification of "things" in the world, and the journey travelled to reach those classifications in the first place.
At the beginning of this book, Susannah Gibson states that the book was spawned from a thesis written at university, and I have to say, unless you're a massive fan of the topic matter, this is what it reads like, a thesis. The subject matter is dealt with intellectually with no breathing room for interesting asides or jocularity. Everything is mulled over seriously and soberly.
Some interesting points I picked up were about coral flowering and sea polyps! Yep, that's as interesting as it gets folks, sea polyps! As I say unless you're a botany/oceanography/taxonomy student or fanatic, then this book is probably not for you.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? is a whip-smart book on the history of taxonomy that I ignored for far too long. Read my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025...

[Ben McFarland · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book about what happened when science discovered the creatures inbetween the kingdoms of life, and inbetween life and death: polyps, Venus flytraps, and fossils. It's really about fitting nature with words, and what happens when the words are old wineskins that cannot contain new wine. Yet the author's focus is on nature, not on the human minds observing nature, which are far more interesting. The human-mind debates about God's action and nature of creation are so simplified as to almost evaporate away. I enjoyed the descriptions of the experiments the scientists did, but the author takes an Epicurean view of "what it all means"* as such a foregone conclusion that the history ends up as static as the old fossils described in Chapter 4. Just as the old experiments challenged the old scientists, the new experiments of the unity underlying the different kingdoms should challenge us in the opposite direction: polyps, Venus flytraps, and fossils all use essentially the same amino acids, sugars, and genetic code. That means something. But this book is all description and no challenge or extension. It assumes an opposition between God and matter that isn't necessary, and then assumes because we know a lot about matter that we have no need for God. That's fine for Laplace but I'd like to think about what it means for us today. It means so much more than this book gives it a chance to mean.


*Greenblatt's The Swerve is quoted admirably. See my review of that book for what I think of that!