ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we examined the sequence of events which led to specialists in the fields of physiological sciences and medicine turning their back on the animal welfare cause. Natural scientists, on the other hand, while in the process of reorganizing their various disciplines, not only continued to lend their support to the cause, but actually made a great contribution to reinvigorating it. In order to analyze their participation in the transformation of the animal welfare movement it will be necessary to give a brief account of the evolution of the status of the natural sciences within the hierarchy of the sciences. In this regard it is worth mentioning how, for extended periods, botany and zoology have been regarded as particularly promising fields of scientific enquiry. Within these disciplines the seminal works of Bacon and Linnaeus laid the foundations for future developments in scientific method and thus, at the beginning of the 19th century, naturalists had high hopes of making decisive contributions to the period of rapid and accelerating progress on which Western societies were then embarking. From this perspective, the development of the natural sciences can be seen to have enabled certain ideas about “pristine natural environments” – places where undomesticated flora and fauna predominate - to be modified in a useful way. Initially these territories, located on the margins of civilization, were regarded as wildernesses, namely places where nature was left untouched by man - and so allowed to be molded in a chaotic fashion by luxuriant vegetation, violent rapids and storms - but densely populated by a wide variety of animal species. Such habitats, seen as disordered and unpredictable, and inhabited by ferocious animals, inevitably invited suspicion and fear and were regarded as no place for civilized man to set foot. Such ideas came to be challenged by the application of the scientific rationality of the natural sciences, which were the key not only to reducing the strangeness of wild lands by making them an object of study, but also to taming the forces which prevailed there, and to harnessing them for the good of civilization. If all thick forests, treacherous rivers, ferocious animals and primitive inhabitants could be researched and understood by science then instead of provoking fear, they would be seen as an invaluable resource, destined to contribute to the boundless moral and economic development which western societies saw as the future of humanity. In fact the London Zoological Society and the Société zoologique d’acclimatation in Paris, founded in 1826 and 1854 respectively, were both set up with the goal of harnessing untamed nature for maximum profit in mind. As we saw in Chapter 3, the missions undertaken by British and French natural scientists were closely integrated into their countries’ colonial enterprises. The introduction, acclimatization and domestication of species recovered from their original natural habitats were regarded as conclusive evidence of the social utility of zoology. 52 That there were close ties between zoological societies and animal welfare societies is hardly worth restating. These two kinds of organization, as we have seen, shared the common project of reducing “chaotic violence” by endorsing a demopedic emotional register which was perfectly suited to the accreditation of its members. We should also mention not only the development of prestigious institutions such as zoological societies and national museums but also, at a local level, the proliferation of a large number of societies for enthusiastic amateur botanists, entomologists and ornithologists (Raffìn and Ricou, 1985). Thus, the 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a craze for collection: indeed the removal of so many specimens by hoards of enthusiasts, all in the name of science, resulted in serious depletion of fauna in the most accessible wild areas.
