Abstract
The first philosophical approach to entomology deals with insects as small animals. Due to the physical differences linked with the difference of scale, small animals seem to live in another world. The second approach deals with nomenclature and classification. It shows the progressive making of the concept of insect. In this process, groups like the crustaceans or the spiders were split off from the insects. The third approach deals with the interpretation of insect societies. – Insects can offer to philosophy a set of thought experiments, which have not been fully exploited.
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Notes
- 1.
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, vol. IV. Paris: Imprimerie Royale 1753, p. 92. (See also a web edition, <www.buffon.cnrs.fr>)
- 2.
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 6 vol.1734-1742.
- 3.
Jean-Henri Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques. Paris: Delagrave, 10 vol. 1925. See for instance the case of the Dung Beetle, VI, 13, p. 243. On Fabre, see: Yves Cambefort. L’œuvre de Jean-Henri Fabre. Paris: Delagrave 1999; Patrick Tort, Fabre. Le miroir aux insectes. Paris: Vuibert/ADAPT 2002.
- 4.
Jules Michelet, L’Insecte. Paris: Hachette 1857, p. 133. See also the new edition by Paule Petitier, Sainte-Marguerite sur Mer: Edition des Equateurs 2011.The other naturalist books by Michelet are: L’Oiseau 1856; La Mer 1861; La Montagne 1868.
- 5.
Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze [Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences]. Leiden: Louis Elsevier 1638. See also John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, “On Being the Right Size”, in: John Maynard Smith (Ed.), On Being the Right Size and other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1927] 1985, pp. 1-8. See also Augustin Cournot Matérialisme. Vitalisme. Rationalisme. Etudes sur l’emploi des données de la science en philosophie. Paris: Hachette 1875. Reissue by Claire Salomon-Bayet: Paris, Vrin 1987. See also Jean-Marc Drouin, “Quelle dimension pour le vivant ?”, in: Thierry Martin (Ed.), Le tout et les parties dans les systèmes naturels. Paris: Vuibert, pp. 107-114.
- 6.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, in: Œuvres complètes, Jacques Chevalier (Ed.), Paris: Gallimard 1954.
- 7.
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1961, pp. 15-48 [posthumous and abridged edition by John T. Bonner]. Reissued with a preface by Stephen Jay Gould, Cambridge: Canto Editions 1992.
- 8.
Stephen Jay Gould, Preface to Thompson, On Growth and Form, op. cit., p. x.
- 9.
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
- 10.
Carl von Linné, Systema naturae, 10th issue, Stockholm: 1758. See also Mary P. Windsor, “The Development of the Linnean Insect Classification”, in: Taxon 25, 1, 1976, pp. 57-67.
- 11.
Pierre-André Latreille, Considérations générales sur l’ordre naturel concernant les classes des crustacés, des arachnides et des insectes. Paris: Schoell 1810.
- 12.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray 1859. Reprint, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1964, p. 455.
- 13.
Willi Hennig, “Phylogenetic Systematics”, in: Annual Review of Entomology, vol. X, 1965, pp. 97-116. French Translation by Daniel Gouget et al., published in: Biosystema, 2, 1987, pp. 1-30.
- 14.
Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie or the History of Bees. London: John Haviland 1623 (first published 1609).
- 15.
Butler, op. cit., first page of chapter IV. On Butler and the gender issue, see: Frederick R. Prete, “Can Female Rule the Hive? The Controversy over Honey Bee Gender Roles in British Beekeeping Texts of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries”, in: Journal of the History of Biology, XXIV (1), 1991, pp. 113-144.
- 16.
Jan Swammerdam, Histoire naturelle des insectes. Utrecht: Ribbius 1685 (French translation).
- 17.
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. With a Commentary Critical, Historical and Explanatory by F.B. Kaye. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1924 (Reprint; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1988).
- 18.
Several publications deal with the controversies about Insect Societies. See for instance: Perru, “La problématique des insectes sociaux: ses origines au XVIIIe siècle et l’œuvre de Pierre-André Latreille”, in: Bulletin d’histoire et d’épistémologie des sciences de la vie, vol. X, 1, 2003, pp. 9-38; Marc Ratcliff, “Naturalisme méthodologique et science des mœurs animales au XVIIIe siècle”, in: Bulletin d’Histoire et d’Epistémologie des sciences de la vie, vol. III, 1, 1996, pp. 17-29; Jean-Marc Drouin, “L’image des sociétés d’insectes en France à l’époque de la Révolution”, in: Revue de Synthèse, vol. IV, 1992, pp. 333-345; Jean-Marc Drouin, “Ants and Bees between the French and the Darwinian Revolution”, in: Ludus Vitalis, vol. XII, 24, 2005, pp. 3-14; Sarah Jansen, “Ameisehügel, Irrenhaus and Bordell: Insektenkunde und Degenerationdiskurs bei August Forel (1848-1931). Entomologe. Psychiater und Sexualreformer”, in: Norbert Haas, Rainer Nägele and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Eds.), Kontamination. Eggingen: Edition Isele 2001, pp. 141-184; Abigail Lustig, “Ants and the nature of nature in August Forel, Erich Wasmann and William Morton Wheeler”, in: Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Eds.), The Moral Authority of Nature. Chicago: The Chicago University Press 2004, pp. 282-307; Charlotte Sleigh, Ant. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2003; John F. M. Clark, “A Little People but Exceedingly Wise? Taming the Ant and the Savage in Nineteeth-Century England”, in: La Lettre de la Maison Française, Oxford, VII, 1997, pp. 65-83.
- 19.
Roland Barthes, Michelet. Paris: Seuil 1954; Linda Orr, Jules Michelet, Nature, History and Language. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1976; Edward K. Kaplan, Michelet’s Poetic Vision. A Romantic Philosophy of Nature, Man, & Woman. Amherst: University of Massachussets Press 1977; Georges Gusdorf, Le Savoir romantique de la Nature. Paris: Payot 1985.
- 20.
Pierre Huber, Recherches sur les mœurs des fourmis indigènes. Paris et Genève: Paschoud 1810. (Translated into English in 1820 under the title The Natural History of Ants.)
- 21.
See François Huber, Nouvelles observations sur les Abeilles. Genève: Barde, Manget 1792.
- 22.
Pierre Huber, Recherches, op. cit., p. 210.
- 23.
See Michelet, L’Insecte, op. cit., pp. 259-260. English translation quoted in Kaplan, op. cit., p. 87.
- 24.
Barthes, Michelet, op. cit., p. 35.
- 25.
Marcelin Berthelot, “Les cités animales et leur evolution”, in: Science et philosophie. Paris: Calman-Lévy 1886, pp. 172-184. (I wish to thank Annie Petit for this reference.)
- 26.
Marcelin Berthelot, “Les sociétés animales. Les invasions des fourmis; le potentiel moral”, in: Science et morale. Paris: Calman-Lévy 1897, pp. 313-331. (I wish to thank Annie Petit for this reference.)
- 27.
Marcelin Berthelot, “Etude. Lettre à monsieur Ludovic Halévy”, in: Jules Michelet, L’Insecte. Paris: Calman-Lévy 1903, pp. 1-39.
- 28.
Yves Carton, Entomologie, Darwin et Darwinisme. Paris: Hermann 2011.
- 29.
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, op. cit., p. 209.
- 30.
Darwin, ibid., p. 216.
- 31.
Darwin, ibid., p. 223.
- 32.
Darwin, ibid., p. 225.
- 33.
Auguste Forel, Les Fourmis de la Suisse. Bâle, Genève, Lyon: Georg 1874; Alfred Espinas, Des Sociétés animales, 2nd ed. Paris: Germer, Baillière et Cie, 1878. [Reprint: New-York: Arno Press 1977]; Maurice Maeterlinck, La vie des Abeilles. Paris: Fasquelle, 1901; La vie des Termites. Paris: Fasquelle 1926; La vie des Fourmis. Paris: Fasquelle 1930.
- 34.
Fabre, op. cit. See also Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques. Yves Delange (Ed.). Paris: Robert Laffont, 2 vol. 1989 (coll. Bouquins).
- 35.
Henri Bergson, L’évolution créatrice. Paris: PUF 1907. New issue: 1962, ch. II, p. 135.
- 36.
William Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour”, in: Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1964, pp. 1-16 and pp. 17-52.
- 37.
Edward O. Wilson, “The Central Problem of Socio-biology”, in: Robert May (Ed.), Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 205-217 (quotation, p. 217).
- 38.
Pierre-Paul Grassé, “La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations inter-individuelles chez Belliocstermes natalensi et Cubitermes sp.: la théorie de la stigmergie: essai d’interprétation des termites constructeurs”, in: Insectes sociaux, 6, 1959, pp. 41-83; Rémy Chauvin, “Les sociétés les plus complexes chez les Insectes”, Communications, 22, 1974, pp. 63-71; Jean-Louis Deneubourg et al., “The Dynamic of Collective Sorting. Robot-like Ants and Ant-like Robots”, in: J. A. Meyer and S. Wilson (Eds.), From Animals to Animats. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, pp. 346-354.
- 39.
I wish to thank Jean-Jacques Levive and Frank Egerton for their careful reading of this text.
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Drouin, JM. (2013). Three Philosophical Approaches to Entomology. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_30
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