How Zoologists Organize Things: The Art of Classification Hardcover – July 14, 2020

Gives a good overlook of how man over time composed the art of classification that we know today. Good for those who wanna know both what it is and how it came about.

Good book

Animal life is complex and diverse. The proposition that it all happened by random mutations is not faring well. This book is not about evolution, but it does show how lifeforms appear to belong to families and creatures that then do evolve into different responses to the environment.

I thought I would brush up on my zoology that I learned in college, but to my surprise, this book is not what it seems. This is not a didactic textbook at all. In fact, it is a book about how classification of animals started and developed. It is a cursory history of animals classification. Each chapter is a 1-3 pages brief summary of an early scientist or naturalist i.e. Charles Darwin and other less well-known. Interspersed among the chapters is voluminous amounts of early drawings of animals and various interpretations of evolutionary trees. This book is more of a book to place on the coffee table or the shelf. The title seems like a textbook title. I don’t think this book could even be an adequate source for research papers. There isn’t a lot of text information for a student to cite. There is a small index of 3 pages in the back. If you were expecting a textbook, this isn’t it. It’s more for the armchair zoologist.

Great illustrations. Instead of keeping it in personal library, it will be placed inside of biology department display cabinet.

This traces how people have classified animals from the earliest records to the present. It’s a historical account & fairly interesting, especially with all the drawings & pictures.However, I thought I was going to read about the biological classification system (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc.), but it’s a treatise for evolution. That’s pretty much all it’s about: how close previous systems were to evolution and how accurate evolution is.

Bainbridge is the Clinical Veterinary Anatomist at the University of Cambridge and author of a number of books, including Stripped Bare: The Art of Animal Anatomy (2018). As in Stripped, he uses illustrations first in this book and accompanies them with text. In short, it’s not textbookish at all but rather a photo tour accompanied by commentary. But the illustrations are selected to make a point and the commentary is sage and to the point.Though quite attractive in its presentation, this is more than a coffee table book. On balance, the book is more about previous ages’ attempts to organize and classify living creatures, with 40 and 40+ page chapters on the treatment of creatures in ancient times (“Aristotle, Bestiaries & Cynocephali” and “Creating Order from Profusion”) and a longish (84 page) chapter on the discoveries and confusions of eighteenth and nineteenth science on matters of animal classification.As to the second chapter (“Creating Order”), a long time past, when I was a practicing historian, I did work on the connections between Christian millenarian thought and Baconian science in mid-seventeenth-century England. For several years, I also taught courses on the intellectual history of the period between 1600-and 1800. I couldn’t ignore the scientific disputes of the time. Based on my fading memory and now out of date knowledge of the matters discussed in this chapter, Bainbridge is spot on.The third chapter, “Trees of Life in a Newly Ancient World’, starts with discussion of early nineteenth century luminaries like Haeckel and Agassiz and progresses through the thunderstorm reared by Darwin and Wallace and their early apostles.The final chapter (“Outward Patterns, Inner Workings”) narrates the ways zoological classification has been revolutionized by new knowledge since 1900. It concludes with presentations of such heterodox figures as W. Ford Doolittle, William Martin, and David Hillis. Five pages from the end is a picture of the Interactive Tree of Life designed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the final two images are both from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, tracking endangered species.I don’t know who wouldn’t benefit from reading this splendid book. It’s intelligently put together, fascinating to read and look at, and I hate to say it as a writer of words but, yes, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

I ordered this book for my 2, 5, and 7 year-olds based on the appearance of the cover because it resembles a line of very popular children's books called "Welcome To The Museum". The line includes several volumes we already own like "Planetarium", "Botanicum", "Anaimalium", "Anatomicum", "Dinosaurium", etc. Based on the title, I thought it would teach them to recognize similarities in animals they are fascinated with and understand groupings of animals. For instance... That chickens, eagles, parrots, pigeons, owls are all types of birds.We were all very surprised when we received this book. It is not intended for children at all. I could see this as assigned reading in a college course on the subject. It's actually a very interesting book that marries art, science, and history from the aspect of classification and taxonomy. About how we as humans from very early on attempted to classify, organize, and make sense of the world around us and ourselves. And it is filled with archival type drawings, sketches, pictures. Intriguing and informative.Even more surprising is, my kids actually like this book and they keep it on their shelf in their room. They love looking through it, studying the intricate pictures, asking me to read parts of it or explain some of the images to them. Sometimes they use it as inspiration for their own drawings and doodles. We've spent evenings just discussing all the animals featured on the cover.Whether in their room or out on the coffee table, there's plenty to see, explore, and learn. Read it cover to cover if you're interested on this topic. Thumb through for the beautiful art inside. Nicely bound hard cover. Attractive cover art. We like it! A gem of a book that I accidentally stumbled upon.

I really enjoyed this book! How it delve into critical look at historical ways of creating visual taxonomy! The images are great! Totally a book you can spend time reading and looking at the images!

MUY BUENA EDICION Y TIENE MUCHAS IMAGENES ILUSTRATIVAS

The book is fine, and the price was good, but the packaging was torn open when it arrived (and had been enclosed in a plastic bag by the Danish Post Office to prevent further deterioration). The package was held in customs for a week, which was because it came from the U.K. rather than within the E.U., despite having been ordered from amazon.de , however it would probably have been late even if it had not been.

While the book contains, indeed, a larger number of illustrations and may be regarded as a collection of names and birthdates of zoologists, I was disappointed by the explanations of the author. I was expecting more background information regarding the most important ideas behind the work of these people.