Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains : The History of High-Level Biological Classification

A generation or two before Socrates, thinkers classified the world's organisms into three categories: plants, animals, and man. However, Aristotle recognized that some organisms, such as sponges and sea-fans, share properties of both plants and animals. These became known as zoophytes. Since then, scientists have explored the idea of a "third kingdom." In Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains, leading molecular systematist Mark A. Ragan offers a history of the idea that there is more to the living world than plants and animals. Progressing chronologically through philosophical, religious, literary, and other pre-scientific traditions, Ragan traces how transgressive creatures such as sponges, corals, algae, fungi, and diverse microscopic beings have been described, categorized, and understood throughout history. The book considers their appearance in early Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions; myths, legends, and traveller's tales; occult literature; and more. Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains also details how the concept of a "third kingdom" has evolved throughout the history of scientific botany and zoology, and continues to evolve up to the present day. Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains features original translations of passages from key historical texts, many of which have never appeared in English before. It also draws on the most recent and reliable scientific literature. A sweeping, interdisciplinary study, Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains is essential reading for students and scholars of the history of biological classification and anyone interested in the history of ideas about the natural world. "This work explores how living organisms have been classified at the highest level. The earliest ideas of nature emphasised transformation. Aristotle recognised that certain objects in the sea share properties of plants and animals; these became known as zoophytes. The narrative follows zoophytes and other transgressive beings through subsequent philosophical and religious traditions, myths, travellers' tales, the occult literature, alchemy, scholasticism, the consolidation of vernacular languages, and the rise of scientific botany and zoology. Leeuwenhoek's discovery of microscopic beings, and Trembley studies on Hydra, complicated the plant-animal dichotomy. Transformation returned as Needham, Buffon and others observed plant material to generate motile animalcules; Linnaeus proposed a Regnum Chaoticum. New challenges arose as the Great Chain of Being was abandoned, algae were observed to liberate free-swimming zoospores, and cell theory was refined. Biology developed differently in France, Germany and Britain, and we follow the rise and fall of supernumerary kingdoms in each environment. Haeckel positioned Protista as one of two, three or four kingdoms. In the Twentieth century the living world was divided between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, while mitochondria and plastids were recognised as descendants of endosymbiotic bacteria. Molecular evidence revealed three domains (Archaea, Bacteria, Eukaryota), although many genomes are linked in a dynamic network of genetic relationships. Environmental genomes now threaten to undermine Eukaryota as an independent domain of life"-- Provided by publisher