A Passion for Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Natural History

by Keith S. Thomson

Thomas Jefferson once wrote to a friend that politics was his "duty" but natural history was his "passion." As this book shows, he was always a man for whom nature was important. With his devotion to detailed knowledge, precise calculation, and rational enquiry, natural history related to everything he did, as a farmer, as a philosopher, and as a citizen. For all his gifts in philosophy and politics and his fascination with the American West, he was never more happy than at home at Monticello, riding across the fields and experimenting with new crops. The great wonder is that, in addition to his public life, he had time to be one of American's first serious students of, among other things, fossils, botany, climate, geology, and anthropology.

Author, Keith Thomson was a visiting fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in 2007. He is professor emeritus of natural history at Yale University and senior research fellow of the American Philosophical Society. Author of twelve other books on evolution, paleontology, and the history of science, he was previously professor and dean at Yale, president of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and university scientist-in-residence at the New School for Social Research.

148 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Keith Thomson is Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society and Professor Emeritus of Natural History, University of Oxford.

Modified from an interview with Greg Ross in “American Scientist”
I have had a wonderful career as a professor of biology and dean (at Yale), a museum director (Yale, Philadelphia, and Oxford), and more recently as an author. I started out as a biologist interested in the evolution of fishes and the origin of major features in the transition between fishes and tetrapods. That inevitably drew me both to paleontology and to study of the “living fossil” lungfishes and the extraordinary living coelacanth. In 1966 I obtained for study the first fresh specimen of the coelacanth from the Comoro Islands (Living Fossil, Norton, 1991). My overall goal was to understand fossils in the same physiological, biomechanical, and ecological terms as we study living animals. In the process I have published on subjects ranging from the evolution of cell size and DNA content in lungfish, and intracranial mechanics in the coelacanth and its fossil relatives, to the origin of the tetrapod middle ear and the body shape and swimming mechanics of sharks. From an early interest in embryology, it was but a short step also to what is now called (rather unhappily) “evo-devo,” or the study of the roles that developmental processes play in evolution, and to writing Morphogenesis and Evolution (Oxford University Press, 1988).

After having been supported by NSF continuously for some 20 years, I cheerfully stepped off the grant treadmill, and in recent years I have had immense pleasure in studying the history of science and in writing for a popular audience, starting with the column Marginalia in American Scientist that I have written for thirty years. My current interests range from Thomas Jefferson and 18th-century science to Charles Darwin. Recent books include Treasures on Earth (Faber and Faber, 2002), Before Darwin (Yale University Press, 2005), Fossils: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Legacy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of Fossils in America (Yale University Press, 2008), A Passion for Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Natural History (Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2008) and The Young Charles Darwin (Yale University Press, 2009). Jefferson’s Shadow: the Story of his Science (Yale University Press, 2012) was the culmination of several years of work as a visiting fellow at the International Centre for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. Due in 2015 is Private Doubt, Public Dilemma (Yale University Press) based on my Terry Lectures at Yale in 2012.
http://keithsthomson.com/index.html

Reviews

[Cyber Dot · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice concise read with some illustrations. This is part of the Monticello Monograph Series. Full of source material quotes and references. Is open and honest about inconsistencies in Jefferson's world view, including views on slavery, Native Americans, animal extinction. Shows how engaged Jefferson was by the natural world; a lifelong learner. Interesting comments on the Lewis and Clark expedition.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable read.

[Laura Auricchio]

This book hasn't come out yet, but I heard the author discussing it on Weekend Edition this morning. It particularly interested me because I'm currently writing about Lafayette's farm; gardening was one of the passions that Jefferson and Lafayette shared.