Essential nature: Bartram's garden and natural history in Philadelphia, 1790--1825

This study tells the story of Bartram's garden in Philadelphia as the gathering place of a community with William Bartram at the center and including Benjamin Smith Barton, Alexander Wilson, James Mease, and Thomas Nuttall. The body of works that make up the heart of the analysis are their publications on the physical sciences and medicine---either books or journal articles published in Philadelphia between 1790 and 1823. By examining these documents and placing them in the context of the lives of the authors and the intellectual environment, this dissertation argues that the projects of the garden were characterized by the search for the essential: the essential characteristics of each individual species, the essential relationships between species, and the essential qualities of life. These explorations, though scientific in content were fundamentally "theological in nature." This study examines the late eighteenth century until the mid-1820s and the intellectual, institutional and cultural developments in American science that the community at the garden participated in. The garden and its ultimate demise represent the transition from eighteenth century to nineteenth century science and how "naturalists" developed into "scientists" in America.