Two books to trouble the biological – and disciplinary – boundaries that trouble us today

Many historians describe writing a monograph as a 'journey' or a 'voyage', but far fewer cop to that journey being 'guided solely by curiosity'.These are Janina Wellmann's words in the epilogue of Biological Motion (p.209).And though Whitney Barlow Robles makes no such direct admission, 'curiosity', in both its noun and verb forms, is the propulsive force behind Curious Species, in which her own curiosity is as palpable a force as that of the naturalists she reads so closely.To be sure, these books are radically different.Yet they both aim at a synthetic view of the life sciences in Europe and the United States, each through its own distinctive historical lens.Densely detailed, sometimes richly atmospheric, both accounts span centuries, cutting cross-sections through scientific theory and practice.Both books are about the ways in which life -from the animal to the cell to the molecule -acts on the human imagination.Both books look to the past for clues to reclaiming the mystery and vital energy that humans have so often seen in life throughout our history.And both books challenge the notion that science, as much as we value it, should lay sole claim to the task of interpreting life.As Wellmann writes, and Barlow Robles would certainly agree, 'nature as a scientific object comes to form the borderline between the sciences and the humanities' (p.209).Barlow Robles's Curious Species blends elements of cultural, intellectual and social history in an account of natural history in the eighteenth century and today that centres four different animal species or taxonomic groups.She begins with coral polyps, and moves to flatfishes and rays, timber rattlesnakes and, finally, raccoons.For each of these, Barlow Robles delves into the archival collections of European and American naturalists, visiting approximately thirty libraries, herbaria and museums around the world, from the Royal Society and the Natural History Museum in London, to American institutions like the Linda