Death of a Naturalist

Spencer Fullerton Baird was an important figure in early Biology and Ecology, and by the time of his death in 1887, he had become a renowned naturalist and scientist in Washington D.C.. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1823, Baird and his brother William grew up fascinated by nature, an interest fostered by their father and the other great naturalists such as Agassiz and Audubon (Goode, 1897). After attaining bachelors and master’s degrees from Dickinson College and being appointed…

self-trained naturalist whose studies of American fungi achieved international renown. However after the civil many slave owners were unable to provide for their families. In order to support his family Ravenel sold seeds and parts of his collections of fungi to collectors. He later worked as a naturalist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Life for people living in the south after the civil war was just staggering. Beginning in 1859, Ravenel wrote frequently in a journal until his death in…

Ahh, the age old question…nature vs nurture? This argument, as you might know, debates wether or not human development is based mainly on their environment or their DNA composition. In literature, there are writers called Naturalists. These Naturalist writers focus on the nature side of the debate. They take more of a “what if” standpoint than a standpoint of argument. Only taking one side in this debate, is more of an observation tactic. Naturalism is the scientific method of literature. The…

Charles Darwin was a 19th century naturalist who shaped the way we view nature and humanity. His theories of evolution completely reassessed how we understand the natural world through his ideas on natural selection. Darwin himself was largely inspired by a few other naturalists who predeceased him, mainly William Paley and Thomas Malthus, and it was their work, as well as his travels around the world, that led him to form his own theories and to change how nature, humans and biology are seen…

000 men died in the Civil War....Mass death numbs the mind and heart as it numbers its vast toll.(Phillip Shaw Paludan, Victims: A True Story Of The Civil War) ” The horrors and bloodshed of this war were translated into every artistic medium imaginable, in an attempt to honor and come to terms with the mass destruction caused.. One author in particular used his writings to explore the faces of naturalism found in war. This author, Stephen Crane, was a naturalist and an American poet, who lived…

Due to his parents’ heavy involvement as Methodists, religion became an ingrained factor in Crane’s psyche. Additionally, Agnes’s abrupt death, when Crane was twelve, greatly impacted his life as she had been his closest friend, mentor, and surrogate mother all in one. In college, Crane was described as a deliberately scandalous, social bully with a hard, Bohemian heart, who struggled deeply…

Zola. Zola was born in Paris in 1840 and died at age 62 in 1902. He is one of the most famous and controversial figures ever know on the French literary scene. Zola was noted for his theories of naturalism, and he is considered the founder of the Naturalist Movement and was called ‘Father of Naturalism, in which his works consisted of fictional portrayal of real life of the scientific method. “Along with his job as a clerk in a publishing firm, Zola started writing articles on current affairs…

For this article, it analyzes both Jack London’s “What Life Means to Me” and Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat.” Utilizing these two stories in light of the fact that both Jack London and Stephen Crane are legitimate naturalist essayists who show the thought of naturalism in two exceptionally unfavorable strategies. Naturalism portrays the extremely restricted control that people have over their own destiny in correlation to the powers of the regular world. In "The Open Boat", the men stranded on…

conscious of the terrible power of nature, and this is evident in most of his portraits of dark, ominous mountains and the seclusion of desolate moors. The uses of this kind of contrasts enable him to reflect on the inscrutability of both life and death as humanity. Indeed, he has made most of his audiences’…

Monty Python’s Life of Brian concludes by challenging viewers to “Always look on the bright side of life.” Naturalist writers do precisely the opposite of this obligation. Naturalism a literary genre of extreme realism that suggests a character’s motivations are caused by his or her family, background, social conditions, and environment. This movement began appearing in literature, art, and theater in the late nineteenth century. Generally writers receive heavy criticism for naturalistic…