Natural history has for a while been a rather ambiguous category. Generating a strong popular appeal, it was for most of the twentieth century relegated to the margins of acceptable scientific practice. However, as the volume under review suggests, natural history appears to have elicited renewed interest on the part of practising life scientists. Defining the pursuit as the observation of whole organisms in their environment, as opposed to the use of models to understand molecules, The Essential Naturalist designates it the foundation of the modern biological enterprise, and characterizes naturalists from the past as ‘giants’ on the shoulders of whom present-day biologists would be sitting.

This book is, in the first place, a collection of texts from the thirteenth to the late twentieth centuries, written by naturalists or by individuals identified as such by the editors (e.g. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 to 1250). They are classified in five sections, introduced by essays authored by practising biologists with a foot in conservation biology. The title of each of these essays – ‘Inspiration’, ‘Exploration’, ‘Initiation’, ‘Intuition’, ‘Unification’ – is meant to convey the authors’ views on natural history and its significance for the sciences of evolution, ecology and the environment at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Such a dual content suggests two approaches to the book. Either it can be taken as an attempt at historicizing natural history through the ordered display of some remarkable specimens of its canonical literature, with a view to acting in the present, or it can be engaged with as a document bringing insights into the perception some professional life scientists have of their practice, its history and the direction it should take in the future. In this latter instance, the volume suggests, on the part of practising conservation biologists, a willingness to distance their enterprise from the gene-based view of evolution, thus seemingly calling into question the so-called modern evolutionary synthesis which has dominated the field of biological inquiry over the last seven decades. Instead, the volume pleads for another synthesis, ‘the confluence of ecology and evolution in a modern view of natural history’ (p. 419). Recruiting natural history appears to be a means of reworking the conceptual and methodological foundations of conservation biology on historically robust grounds, so as to place it unambiguously on the map of twenty-first-century life sciences.

In their introduction the editors pre-emptively warn readers that the volume should not be taken as an attempt at historicizing natural history. Yet the argument in the volume is historical, not least because the past is invoked throughout to shape present practices in the life sciences. It seems reasonable, therefore, to see The Essential Naturalist as an intervention in the field of the history of natural history. In this respect, two main points can be made. In the first place, it looks like the editors and the contributors have all engaged with the texts they selected in a way comparable to the approach field naturalists criticized when commenting on their study-based counterparts, who stored remarkable specimens in cabinets and used them to draw general conclusions about the natural world, whilst not taking into account their original environment. In The Essential Naturalist ‘natural history gems’ (p. ix) are juxtaposed as so many specimens, meant to demonstrate the pertinence of preconceived categories, and to support a normative discourse about today's practice of the life sciences. Many of these writings from the past are effective in conveying their authors' passion for the field, some are even still efficient in eliciting the adventurous thrill associated with the exploration of unknown lands a couple of centuries ago, whilst most are great fun to read. But unless one is oneself versed in the various cultures of natural history, it is difficult to engage with these pieces otherwise than as with entertaining travellers' tales. Second, the conception of the history of science informing the volume decidedly rests on the mythical figure of the precursor as founding hero. It also makes much of such notions as the idea that a lack of appropriate method and social pressure on the freedom of scientists are the principal sources of obstruction to the progress of knowledge. In this instance one can note a misleading account of Thomas Kuhn's work, who supposedly ‘described in detail how society's inability to accept, explain, or even understand certain scientific contributions has historically repressed the contribution's impact on our understanding of how nature works’ (p. 4). It is therefore ironic that, although it seems to forget that ‘good science’ and ‘appropriate method’ are contingent categories, and the outcome of much negotiation, The Essential Naturalist should stand as evidence that conservation biology is in the midst of such argument.