Fellow’s new book explores the human quest to classify the animal world

Friday 4 September 2020

A new book from Dr David Bainbridge (2003), a clinical veterinary anatomist at the University of Cambridge, reveals the history of artistic systematisation of the animal world. ‘How Zoologists Organize Things’ (published this month by Frances Lincoln) tells the fascinating, visual story of this classification, reflecting prevailing artistic trends and scientific discoveries throughout the centuries, and revealing as much about ourselves as they do about the creatures depicted.

Developments are categorised as four stages in the book:

1) An ABC of Early Classification (Antiquity–1700)

2) Renaissance and Enlightenment (1700–1820)

3) After Evolution (1820–1900)

4) The Modern World (1900–present)

Dr Bainbridge comments, “Long before Darwin, or Watson and Crick, our ancestors were obsessed with the visual similarities and differences between the creatures which inhabit the Earth alongside us. The human quest to classify living beings has left us with a rich artistic legacy in four great stages – the folklore and religiosity of the ancient and Medieval world; the naturalistic cataloguing of the Enlightenment; the evolutionary trees and maps of the nineteenth century; and the modern, computer-hued classificatory labyrinth. These charts of the zoological world parallel prevailing artistic trends, social mores and scientific discoveries, yet there are conceptual threads which run throughout: animal life as a parable, a tree, a maze, and a mirror upon ourselves.”