Marston Bates (July 23, 1906 – April 3, 1974) was an American zoologist. Bates' studies on mosquitoes contributed to the understanding of the epidemiology of yellow fever in northern South America.
A wise and well-informed humanist has taken the time to look lovingly and wonderingly at the living world around him, and to study the ways in which scientists have tried to analyze the world. . . THE BEST INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL HISTORY THAT HAS YET BEEN WRITTEN.
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
Beyond natural history Other biological sciences take up the study at other levels of organization: dissecting the individual into organs and tissues and seeing how these work together, as in physiology; reaching down still further to the level of cells, as in cytology; and reaching the final biological level with the study of living molecules and their interactions, as in biochemistry. No one of these levels can be considered as more important than any other.
The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities.
One dictionary that I consulted remarks that "natural history" now commonly means the study of animals and plants "in a popular and superficial way," meaning popular and superficial to be equally damning adjectives. This is related to the current tendency in the biological sciences to label every subdivision of science with a name derived from the Greek. "Ecology" is erudite and profound; while "natural history" is popular and superficial. Though, as far as I can see, both labels apply to just about the same package of goods.
The parasite that causes malaria edges through the cells of the stomach wall of the mosquito and forms a cyst which grows and eventually bursts to release hundreds of sporozoites into the body cavity of the mosquito. . . As far as we can tell, the parasite does not harm the mosquito. . . It has always seemed to me, though, that these growing cysts. . . must at least give the mosquito something corresponding to a stomach-ache.
We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.
The commonest forms of amateur natural history in the United States are probably gardening, bird watching, the maintenance of aquarium fish, and nature photography.
The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our 'deceivers' than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced.
Natural history is not equivalent to biology. Biology is the study of life. Natural history is the study of animals and plants-of organisms. Biology thus includes natural history, and much else besides.