Joseph Hooker and the progress of botany, 1845--1865 (Charles Darwin)

Few nineteenth-century naturalists wielded as much influence as Joseph Hooker. Well-connected to science's old guard and active among ambitious younger men of science, Hooker wielded significant institutional power from the president's chairs of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) (1868) and the Royal Society (1873--8), and from following his father as Kew Gardens' director. Hooker had a lasting influence on biology, directly through his own botanical work and indirectly through his friendship and collaboration with Charles Darwin.; This study charts Hooker's various responses to the multiple challenges facing botany in the formative period from his failed attempt to gain the chair of botany at the University of Edinburgh in 1845 to his ascension as director of Kew Gardens in 1865. Two broad themes run through my analysis: the professionalization of science and the species questions. Hooker sought to create a profession appropriate and idiosyncratic to a distinct high-Victorian culture. He aspired to consolidate men of science into a dutiful and centralized community dedicated to national well-being. The nation in turn owed the scientific community for its ministration.; Hooker's chief preoccupation was the promotion of "sound and philosophical" botany, which absolutely demanded adherence to the broad species concept. The issue of species delimitation took strict precedence over the question of origin of species. He opposed Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection for more than a decade because he believed that it would promote the reckless creation of species names by "species mongers." Darwin only belatedly converted Hooker to evolution by convincing him that it supported the practice of "real botanists". For this reason, the Darwinian Revolution by design validated rather than upended existing systematic botany.