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NATURAL HISTORY I: THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
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‘Natural history’ is a term and a pursuit of ancient origin. It falls, even today, under what are called the natural sciences, being a study of natural objects based more in observation than in experiment. This course follows a classical approach wherein the writings of noted naturalists, from Aristotle to Audubon, have pride of place. Following an introductory consideration of the distinction between living and non-living, and animal and plant, the course moves through the hierarchy of the animal kingdom, from the lobster to man, by way of the bee, the goose, and the skunk, among others. Lessons tend to focus on an animal or two, taking a close examination of them as an opportunity for insight into fundamental principles that transcend the species examined. In this way the student has the satisfaction of gaining particular and detailed knowledge of common species, as well as an understanding of the more universal principles that typify and govern the animal world, as well as the broader cosmos. The course culminates in a brief examination of the rational animal, man, considered both according to what he shares in common with lower animals, as well as in his vocation as rational knower, a steward of the lower animals in his pursuit of higher wisdom. |
About the Authors
John Cuddeback, Ph.D.
Christopher O. Blum, Ph.D.
Sample Lessons
Lesson 09: The Canada Goose
Course Resources
Coming Soon...
Individual Registration
Family Registration
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COURSE CONTENTS
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The CLAA's Natural History courses enrich students' early progress as they prepare today for philosophical studies tomorrow.
Lesson #1. What is an Animal?
Lesson #2. The Lobster
Lesson #3. The Cuttlefish
Lesson #4. The Sea Urchin
Lesson #5. The Bee
Lesson #6. The Trout
Lesson #7. The Frog
Lesson #8. The Turtle
Lesson #9. The Canada Goose |
Lesson #10. The Miracle of Flight
Lesson #11. Day’s Herald Bird
Lesson #12. Birds at Home: In their Nests and in the Order of Creation
Lesson #13: Rodents
Lesson #14: Forest creatures
Lesson #15: Carnivores
Lesson #16: Farm friends
Lesson #17. Man the Knower
Lesson #18. The Steward and the Craft of Husbandry |
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ABOUT NATURAL HISTORY IN THE CLAA
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Q. What is natural history?
A. While the term can be used in different ways, our use is rooted in the practice of naturalists such as Aristotle, Linnaeus, Audubon, and Fabre. It is an investigation of the natural world through an examination of the characteristics and habits of various natural species. This investigation yields a vision of the natural world as what has been called a ‘great chain of being,’ wherein there is a hierarchy of species between inanimate and animate, and lower and higher animate species, culminating in human beings.
This investigation is not properly a ‘science,’ in the traditional use of the term. This is because a science is an ordered body or a unified system of knowledge wherein certain first principles are the basis for knowledge of conclusions. Euclid’s geometry is an example of such an ordered body of knowledge. There is such a science of the natural world. It is what is called ‘natural philosophy’ or ‘physics,’ using the latter term in the original sense given it by Aristotle. Natural history is a preparation for natural philosophy. At the same time, in the broader contemporary use of the term ‘science,’ natural history can be considered among the ‘natural sciences.’
Q. Why study natural history?
A. The ultimate goal or end of this study is fundamentally twofold: moral formation and intellectual formation. This study contributes to the formation of moral character by cultivating a connaturality with the natural world: that is, an experiential sense of belonging and communion (a kind of oneness through similarity) with the rest of what God has created. Such a connaturality enhances our perception of the dignity and the challenge of being a creature of God. It gives a sense of direction and purpose. At the same time it encourages an attitude of stewardship, an attitude grounded in gratitude for our place in creation.
This study provides intellectual formation inasmuch as knowledge of the natural world, especially one that perceives order, hierarchy, and finality (purpose), prepares the mind for the higher philosophical sciences: both ‘speculative’ ones such as natural philosophy and metaphysics, and ‘practical’ones such as ethics and politics. One way it does this is by enabling students to recognize and make distinctions, whether ones as fundamental as inanimate/animate and plant/animal, or as specific as oviparous/viviparous animals. More generally, we can say that this study forms in students habits of intellectual and sensory attentiveness and receptivity to intelligible objects. One the most fundamental human attitudes toward truth should be that of humble attentiveness and receptivity. Further, the examination of specific animal species gives occasion for a consideration of universal principles that are true throughout the entire natural world.
The study of natural history has many other fruits. We might also mention the simple joy of recognition of and familiarity with common elements in our natural environment.
Q. How will we study natural history?
A. The order of study is always important. In considering the order of study we keep in mind two things: what is more accessible or knowable to us as humans, and what is the end or goal of the study. Though we begin with the lower animals, we do so in light of our common understanding of our own human bodies. Throughout our study of the animal kingdom we will refer to our understanding of human beings. This acts as a reminder to us that our study of lower natural things aims to enhance our understanding of ourselves, as well as even higher things. Thus we will end our study by turning explicitly to man, so as to gain further insight into him precisely in light of the studies that we have done.
We should note some important distinctions between our study of natural history and most ‘science’ today. In our study of the natural world we will read extensive selections from naturalists from the ancient world through the nineteenth century. While the more contemporary ‘specialist’ approach to the natural world has yielded an increase in factual information about many natural species and how they function, it has at the same time had unfortunate effects. There now tends to be something of a wall of separation between normal experience of the natural world on the one hand, and how people think about and study the natural world on the other. Most ‘scientific’ descriptions of natural species and their processes use a technical language that has at least two major drawbacks. First, it is laden with the theoretical framework of modern science, which is fundamentally flawed in some of its basic principles. Second, in its very technicality it tends to turn one’s attention more to the theoretical framework than to what our senses actually disclose about the world. The pre-specialist naturalists, by contrast, in reporting what their senses disclose tend to use language that is more generally accessible. In this way they draw our attention to the natural things themselves, enhancing our experience of the world through the five senses. They thus serve as our guides in turning a more attentive ‘eye’ to the natural world, thus building a strong foundation for a true science of nature.
If you have any questions about the CLAA's Natural History program or individual courses, please contact us.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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JOHN CUDDEBACK, PH.D.
 Growing up in the Patuxent Valley of Maryland, a paradise for birds, John Cuddeback followed in his father’s footsteps as an avid backyard bird-watcher and gardener. He spent many hours photographing and cataloguing the birds at his bedroom window feeder. Dr. Cuddeback later found that his love for and familiarity with animals and plants nourished his pursuit of higher studies in Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy. He received both an M.A. and a PhD. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. Since 1995 he has taught in the philosophy department at Christendom College, as chairman from 2004 to 2008. He writes and lectures on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, contemplation, and friendship. His book “Friendship: The Art of Happiness” was published in 2003, and republished in 2010 as “Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness.” Dr. Cuddeback, a lay Dominican, is still an avid gardener and bird watcher, as well as a hunter and homesteading-farmer. He lives with his wife and five children in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
CHRISTOPHER O. BLUM, PH.D.
 From his youth an avid hiker in the Blue Ridge of his native Virginia and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Christopher Blum’s love for natural history was lastingly enkindled by Dr. J. R. Riopel’s course Green Plants, which he took while a biology major at the University of Virginia. Having spent the summers of his undergraduate years taking courses in field biology and working as a research assistant at biological field stations in Virginia and Montana, he was poised to pursue a career in fresh water ecology when the love of wisdom led him to the University of Notre Dame for the Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science. His studies there introduced him to Aristotle as a biologist, and he has been reading, teaching, and writing about Aristotle ever since, first as a professor at Christendom College and now as a Fellow of Thomas More College, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. At Thomas More, Dr. Blum has designed and taught the required course in Natural History, in which the freshmen are introduced to the flora and fauna of the mixed hardwood forests that typify central New England. As a scholar and writer, Dr. Blum’s interests have included such subjects as medieval French architecture, the educational vision of Blessed John Henry Newman, the novels of Jane Austen, and the French Catholic Counter-Enlightenment thinkers Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Joseph de Maistre, and Louis de Bonald. Dr. Blum and his family live in an old white clapboard home in a small town in north-central Massachusetts with their dog and a bountiful garden.
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