Knowing Nature: Handbooks, Field Guides, & Apps

If you want to learn more about the plants and animals you come across in the natural world, there’s no shortage of books, field guides, and apps that can help you. But for millennia, natural history was primarily transmitted orally and often centered on practicalities. Which plants are safe? Which ones can hurt you? Which ones have healing properties? Much of that oral tradition has been lost to time, but the path to modern natural field guides can be found in the history of the book.

The earliest written works on natural history, such as those by the first century pharmacologist Dioscorides, were accessible only to a narrow class of elite scholars who could read and write long treatises in ancient languages. While the advent of the printing press greatly increased the reach of knowledge about natural history, the cost of large, expensive scientific works by artists like Mark Catesby or John James Audubon limited access as well. But in time, the rise of portable printed handbooks radically expanded who could learn about nature.

By the turn of the twentieth century, natural history was no longer the exclusive province of elite male physicians, scholars, and aristocrats. It belonged to self-taught naturalists of many kinds. Women were central to this transformation. Agnes and Maria Catlow, Anna Atkins, Florence Merriam Bailey, and Frances Theodora Parsons—among others—brought natural history to popular audiences at a time when professional science worked hard to exclude them. Industrial and technological advances opened up educational opportunities and leisure time for many to explore nature in new ways. The history of the modern field guide in its global reach includes names like Chapman & Reed, Grout, Kobayashi, Peterson, and Sibley, whose published works classified and described everything from birds to ferns, fungi, insects, mosses, reptiles, seashells, trees, and wildflowers.

Knowing Nature traces some of this history, from the rise of printed books for educated lay audiences to the democratizing ambitions of field guides and the opportunities available now in the digital age. There is no way to curate this history without considering the exclusions, erasures, and blind spots. As scientific knowledge became more available to some, it has often remained out of reach to others, while marginalizing and erasing other ways of knowing nature entirely. Exploring this history while considering new interpretations can help us understand what “knowing nature” means for each of us.

This exhibition was planned as part of the Spring 2026 class “Art and History of Botany” taught by Andrew Griebeler, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. It is the result of collaboration by many people, including Clayton Beasley, Nathaniel Biddle, Anna Brown, Meg Brown, Jennifer Dai, Michael Daul, Sabina Eraso, Cat Gambel, Brooke Guthrie, Henry Hebert, Janelle Hutchinson, Johanna Hemby, Carly Hester, Rachel Ingold, Yoon Kim, Ava Kocher, Chunxi Liu, Karina Lu, Theodore Lumpkin, Brock Neorr, Charlie Robb, Canaan Salles-Spar, Mariam Samake, Makayla Smith, Aaron Welborn, Brielle Widelo, and Sung Won Byun. This exhibit was funded in part by E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.