Aristotle's Ladder, Darwin's Tree: The Evolution of Visual Metaphors for Biological Order
Aristotle's Ladder, Darwin's Tree: The Evolution of Visual Metaphors for Biological Order
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Abstract
This book explores the rich history of visual metaphors that have been used to picture biological order and looks at the influence of these metaphors on the perception people have of their place in nature. It begins with the ancient use of ladders to show biological order and moves to the Romans' use of trees to represent seasonal life cycles and genealogies. It then explains how the early Christian Church appropriated trees to represent biblical genealogies and how, in the late eighteenth century, the tree was reclaimed to visualize relationships in the natural world. It shows how Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) exorcised the exclusively creationist view of the “tree of life,” and explains how his ideas sparked an explosion of tree metaphors, mostly coined by his younger acolytes in Europe. The book also covers the mid-twentieth century and shows how Darwin's ideas helped precipitate another and even greater explosion of tree building, which was also driven by the birth of powerful computers and the emergence of molecular technology. Throughout, this study shows how the evolution of “tree of life” iconography has been entwined with our changing perception of the world and of ourselves.
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Front Matter
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One
Blaming Aristotle
J. David Archibald
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Two
The Roots of the Tree of Life
J. David Archibald
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Three
Competing Visual Metaphors
J. David Archibald
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Four
Deciphering Darwin’s Trees
J. David Archibald
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Five
The Gilded Age of Evolutionary Trees
J. David Archibald
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Six
The Waning and Waxing of Darwinian Trees
J. David Archibald
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Seven
Three Revolutions in Tree Building
J. David Archibald
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Eight
The Paragon of Animals
J. David Archibald
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End Matter
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