A History of Biogeography for the Twenty-First Century Biogeographer

Abstract

Most histories written for scientists are aimed at identifying a founder, usually a patriarchal figure from whom all knowledge originates. While this may serve some practitioners of science to unify a field, it is in the most part a political exercise. Twenty-first century biogeography has multiple origins, most of which are in the twentieth century. Few, if any methodologies, theories and implementations of twenty-first century biogeography go back to the nineteenth century, let alone the eighteenth. What is more, twenty-first century biogeography has many different practitioners that hail from different backgrounds, very much like the practitioners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The calls for unity in biogeography in twenty-first century are remarkably similar to those in the late nineteenth century. Take any given number of practitioners from different backgrounds (e.g., taxonomy, geography) and allow them to pursue questions about organismal distribution, you will invariably end up with a multidisciplinary field regardless in which century you practise. The aim of this book is to show that eighteenth and nineteenth century plant and animal geography is a multidisciplinary profession and in as much conflict as twentieth and twenty-first century biogeography. The problems being encountered in biogeography today (e.g., calls for unification) are the same as those in the past. Origins of Biogeography is a history for twenty-first century biogeographers that detail the confusion of geographical and taxonomic laws (Chap. 2 ), the conflict between practitioners (Chap. 3 ), the divergence of classifications (Chap. 4 ), and the way we implement our plant and animal geographies (Chaps. 5 and 6 ) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the end of the nineteenth century the basic divisions in twentieth century biogeography are already apparent. The twentieth century has its own unique history, which this book will not cover. Few biogeographers see twentieth century origins in their field.