The Book Review Editors for Isis noticed that I had reviewed Cambridge University Press’s Cultures of Natural History back in 1996 and invited me to write a more extensive appreciation of its successor volume. Worlds of Natural History is edited by the same team, with the addition of Helen Anne Curry, and seeks to fulfill the same task, providing a survey of the latest trends in the study of the history of natural history for both the academic and the general reader. The essays are not intended to be research papers, although some deal with fairly specific case studies. Nor is the volume intended as a comprehensive survey of the whole field. The chapters are meant to show the reader how scholars have begun to address issues that were neglected, undervalued, or even unrecognized until recently. The result is a literally massive volume (1.5 kg) with 150 pages more than the previous survey, allowing room for a total of thirty-two chapters—not counting the editors’ introduction and conclusion. The book is very well produced, printed on high-quality paper with numerous black-andwhite illustrations and a generous section of color plates, although its sheer size makes the paperback rather fragile. Like the previous volume, this is divided into sections defined partly by time periods. “Early Modern Ventures” covers the era of the scientific revolution and “Enlightened Orders” the eighteenth century, while “Publics and Empires” and “Connecting and Conserving” take different routes through the whole period since 1800. The editors clearly did not want to divide the nineteenth from the twentieth centuries, and perhaps inevitably the division between the last two sections is rather permeable. In some ways the most striking difference between this and the Cultures volume is the strong representation of the twentieth century, a period almost ignored previously except for some concluding reflections in James Secord’s epilogue. There is now a much greater temporal continuity leading through to a conclusion that—like that to the previous volume—speculates about future developments in the field. In their introduction Nicholas Jardine and Emma Spary make the case for retaining an interest in natural history as a “coherent enterprise” despite the rise of new disciplines with a harder focus defined by laboratories, computers, and the whole array of techniques characteristic of big science. There are still areas of study that are recognizable by their dependence on collecting from the natural world, arranging and classifying the specimens, and representing the results in various formats, including both print and museum displays. These areas have

中文翻译：

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物质性质

Isis 的书评编辑注意到我在 1996 年回顾了剑桥大学出版社的自然历史文化，并邀请我对其后续卷进行更广泛的评价。Worlds of Natural History 由同一个团队编辑，并加入了 Helen Anne Curry，旨在完成同样的任务，为学术界和一般人提供关于自然历史史研究的最新趋势的调查读者。这些论文不打算成为研究论文，尽管有些涉及相当具体的案例研究。本书也不打算作为对整个领域的全面调查。这些章节旨在向读者展示学者如何开始解决直到最近才被忽视、低估甚至未被认识的问题。结果是一个字面上的巨大体积（1。5 公斤），比之前的调查增加了 150 页，总共有 32 章的空间——不包括编辑的介绍和结论。这本书制作精良，印刷在优质纸张上，配有大量黑白插图和大量彩版，尽管其庞大的尺寸使平装本相当脆弱。与上一卷一样，本书分为部分按时间段定义的部分。《早期现代创业》涵盖了科学革命时代和 18 世纪的“开明秩序”，而《公共与帝国》和《连接与保护》从 1800 年以来的整个时期采取了不同的路线。编辑显然不想将 19 世纪与 20 世纪分开，也许不可避免地，最后两个部分之间的划分是相当具有渗透性的。在某些方面，这本书与《文化》卷之间最显着的区别是对 20 世纪的强烈再现，这个时期之前几乎被忽略了，除了詹姆斯·塞科德 (James Secord) 的结语中的一些总结性反思。现在有一个更大的时间连续性导致一个结论——就像上一卷一样——推测该领域的未来发展。尼古拉斯·贾丁 (Nicholas Jardine) 和艾玛·斯帕里 (Emma Spary) 在他们的介绍中提出，尽管新学科兴起，其重点由实验室、计算机和大科学所特有的一系列技术定义，但仍保持对自然历史的兴趣作为“连贯的事业” . 仍然有一些研究领域可以通过依赖从自然界收集、排列和分类标本而识别出来，并以各种格式表示结果，包括印刷品和博物馆展示。这些地区有