|
Science on the Texas Frontier Observations of Dr. Gideon Lincecum Edited by Jerry Bryan Lincecum, Edward Hake Phillips, and Peggy A. Redshaw Foreword by A.C. Greene
|
Edward O. Wilson has described Dr. Gideon Lincecum as "an American original, expansive, passionate, and prone to make science out of what he could see with his own eyes. His life illuminates an important era, and mood, in Texas history, and he ranks as one of America's major pioneering naturalists."
Gathered together here for the first time are selections from Lincecum's letters and other scientific writings, placed in context and ordered to provide a narrative account of this frontier naturalist's twenty-five-year investigation of Texas fauna, flora, landscape, and weather.
From the mysterious qualities of native plants, both medicinal and poisonous, to the fearsome rapidity of the blue norther, turning summer to winter along the plains in a frigid instant, Lincecum recorded what he saw and experienced in the wilds of the Texas frontier. His richly detailed letters, here illustrated by Betsy Warren, were sent to leading contemporary scientists such as Charles Darwin, Spencer Baird, Joseph Henry, and Elias Durand, and his essays were published in both popular and scientific journals. Lincecum's writings were typically marked by humor and wit, as he opted for an unorthodox approach in his scientific investigations, often arriving at startling conclusions.
His reports did at times give rise to controversy: his anthropomorphic observations of ants, attributing to the insects humanlike social and agricultural skills—a theory he made known in a letter to Darwin—is still referred to as the "Lincecum myth."
JERRY BRYAN LINCECUM, professor of English, EDWARD HAKE PHILLIPS, professor emeritus of history, and PEGGY A. REDSHAW, professor of biology, are all members of the faculty at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
Science on the Texas Frontier
0-89096-768-7 cloth $35.00s
0-89096-790-3 paper $17.95
LC 97-10939. 6x9. 224 pp. 3 b&w photos. 20 line drawings.
Map. Apps. Bib. Index.
History of Science. Texana. Western History.
Publication Date: October 1997.
Terms of order and other ways to order