Octopus element from a Roman mosaic within the 'Home of the Dancing Faun', Pompeii (circa 1st century BC). Wikimedia
If we need to analysis a topic, how will we do it? We may examine it in books or do experiments in a lab. Or one other means is to seek out individuals who know one thing about it and ask them.
Accumulating data from members of the general public has lengthy been a technique of scientific analysis. We name it citizen science. In keeping with Nationwide Geographic, that is “the observe of public participation and collaboration in scientific analysis to extend scientific data”.
In the present day, citizen science is a well-liked observe, with dozens of packages designed by teachers to have interaction the general public and leverage energy by numbers. Its origins, nevertheless, go a lot farther again than you would possibly assume – all the way in which to historical occasions.
Aristotle and animals
Most of us know of Aristotle (384–322 BCE) for his philosophical works, however he was additionally an amazing scientist.
Aristotle consulted most of the people when enterprise his scientific analysis initiatives. He wrote quite a few books about animals, the best of which was his Historical past of Animals. He additionally wrote smaller works together with Elements of Animals and Era of Animals. Collectively, these are normally known as Aristotle’s organic writings.
The European conger eel (Conger conger) is certainly one of tons of of species of birds, mammals and fish recognized in Aristotle’s writings.
Wikimedia
The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (roughly 24–79 CE) has instructed us about a few of Aristotle’s analysis strategies when writing these texts.
In keeping with Pliny, Alexander the Nice (356–323 BCE) – who was Aristotle’s scholar – supported Aristotle’s analysis on animals by ordering the general public to collaborate:
orders got to some 1000’s of individuals all through the entire of Asia and Greece, all those that made their residing by searching, fowling, and fishing and those that have been in control of warrens, herds, apiaries, fishponds and aviaries, to obey [Aristotle’s] directions, in order that he won’t fail to learn about any creature born wherever.
An 1885 depiction of Alexander the Nice together with his tutor Aristotle.
The New York Public Library
Trendy students aren’t sure Alexander really gave this order. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s writings about animals typically consult with data he acquired from others who labored instantly with animals, corresponding to hunters, beekeepers, fishermen and herdsmen.
For instance, Aristotle thought employee wasps die off throughout the winter whereas mom wasps stay by means of it. He will need to have relied on the stories of farmers for this data. Within the Historical past of Animals, he wrote:
The employee wasps don’t stay by means of the yr however all die when winter has come on, whereas the leaders that are known as mom wasps are seen all through the winter and conceal underground. For whereas ploughing and digging within the winter many individuals have seen mom wasps however none have seen staff.
Aristotle was at occasions additionally crucial of the eyewitness data he acquired. As an example, in Era of Animals, he says some individuals instructed him fish don’t copulate, as a result of that they had not seen fish copulating. However he goes on to say these individuals are flawed – and that he himself is aware of fish do certainly copulate:
The fish copulate in the identical means as dolphins do, by inserting themselves alongside of one another […] The fishermen don’t discover this […] and they also be a part of the refrain and repeat the identical outdated silly story that fish conceive by swallowing the semen.
Aristotle was proper. Whereas most fish don’t have sexual activity, some do. Clearly, Aristotle had both requested sufficient individuals and/or investigated the difficulty himself to seek out the reality.
Theophrastus and timber
Aristotle wasn’t the one historical researcher who received data from members of the general public. One other was the thinker Theophrastus (372–287 BCE), whose important space of analysis was vegetation. Like Aristotle, Theophrastus weighed up and examined the credibility of the totally different stories offered to him.
In his Enquiry into Vegetation, he rejects the opinion of a few of his informants, saying:
These informants have been responsible of an essential piece of ignorance. For they believed that the frankincense and the myrrh have been produced by the identical tree.
Fresco depiction of a backyard, Pompeii, 1st century AD.
Wikimedia
As a substitute, he most popular the report of some sailors. These sailors, who had made a voyage and examined the timber in individual, reported that frankincense and myrrh come from totally different timber.
Theophrastus believed them – and as soon as once more he was proper. Frankincense comes from Boswellia timber, whereas myrrh comes from Commiphora timber.
Unusual tales
Accumulating data from the general public isn’t simple. Individuals would possibly fabricate data, or report unusual and weird sights which can be tough to confirm.
The Roman historian Claudius Aelian (2nd-Third century CE) collected every kind of (typically unusual) tales about animals for his work On Animals.
In a single passage Aelian describes quite a few animals with somewhat odd options:
Within the time of Atothis, son of Menis, there appeared a crane with two heads […] and within the reign of one other king there appeared a chook with 4 heads […] Nicocreon of Cyprus possessed a deer with 4 horns […] I personally have seen a sacred ox with 5 ft which was an providing to Zeus within the nice metropolis of Alexandria.
Elsewhere, Aelian stories on unfamiliar beings we’re extra accustomed to. Take, for instance, his story of an enormous octopus:
I be taught of an octopus at Dicaearchia in Italy which attained to a monstrous bulk and scorned and despised meals from the ocean and such pasturage because it offered. And so this creature really got here out on to the land and seized issues there. Now it swam up by means of a subterranean sewer that discharged the refuse of the aforesaid metropolis into the ocean and emerged in a home on the shore the place some Iberian retailers had their cargo, that’s, pickled fish from that nation in immense jars: it threw its tentacles around the earthenware vessels and with its grip broke them and feasted on the pickled fish.
Aelian says one of many retailers needed to combat the octopus to stop it stealing their meals, however was too afraid because the creature “was too massive for one man” to combat.
This octopus mosaic made in Spain dates from the 2nd-Third century AD – across the identical time Aelian was alive.
World Historical past Encyclopaedia/Museo Arqueológico Nacional, CC BY-NC-SA
We don’t know whether or not Aelian’s stranger tales are true or not. Nonetheless, it’s clear not less than a few of these tales have been collected from different individuals throughout his analysis.
By getting assist from the general public, historical researchers have been in a position to make quite a lot of progress in research of topics corresponding to animals and vegetation. They needed to be cautious, although. Very like right now, discernment was essential within the case of unusual tales.
Konstantine Panegyres doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.
