Dark Trails: Adventures of a Naturalist

Adventures on the dark side: an introduction to darkfield microscopy.

Microscopists are used to looking at the world in the glaring light of brightfield illumination. When a specimen is placed on the microscope stage and the lamp is switched on, the general expectation is that the object will be seen transilluminated by a uniform, bright background. Light is expected to pass directly through the sample, forming an image that derives its colors and densities from ...

Was Spinoza a Naturalist?

In this article I dispute the claim, made by several contemporary scholars, that Spinoza was a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’ here refers to two distinct but related positions in contemporary philosophy. The first, ontological naturalism, is the view that everything that exists possesses a certain character (variously defined) permitting it to be defined as natural and prohibiting it from being defin...

1 Naturalist A

The naturalist in a world of genomics.

Functional genomics provides new opportunities to address issues of fundamental interest in evolutionary biology and suggests many new research directions that are ripe for evolutionary investigation. New types of data, and the ability to study biological processes from a whole genome perspective, are likely to have a profound impact on evolutionary biology and ecology. To illustrate, we discus...

Richard Owen: Victorian naturalist

Among the visitors who throng the British Museum of Natural History, to stand in awe before its spectacular displays, or marvel at its architecture, few give a thought to Richard Owen, the man who inspired the establishment of the greatest Victorian "cathedral of science". Some will notice Owen's statue and perhaps wonder what it is doing there. For surely this noble building must have been a t...