Natural and Cultural Histories

The writing of “history” traditionally comprised both natural and human history; but, so the story goes, in the course of the eighteenth century the two historiographies parted, and specialists started to focus on one or the other. By the mid-nineteenth century, at the latest, we have professional historians in both fields, neatly separated along the boundaries of the so-called “two cultures” – with the history of nature falling into the realm of science and the history of human culture into the humanities. This panel explores examples and developments that run counter to this standard narrative. We emphasize the persistence of considerable overlap, and trace a continuous process of negotiating and contesting the boundaries between “natural” and “cultural” histories. The first paper (Boom) uses the example of the Brussels naturalist F.X. de Burtin to show how, even in the 1780s, the history of the earth and the history of humanity were seen as shaped by analogous processes. The second paper (Nyhart) enters the nineteenth century, and analyzes the theory of history held by the German botanist and cell theory pioneer M. Schleiden. The third (Krämer) and fourth (Nickelsen) contributions are intimately connected, and investigate how botanists in the late nineteenth century claimed an important role for themselves in the writing of cultural history, culminating in the call for a new concept of “culture” that acknowledged the rising importance of the sciences. The commentary (Müller-Wille) complements the panel’s papers and opens the floor for a more general discussion.