Natural history is the study of organisms including plants or animals in their environment, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a very broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. So while modern natural history dates historically from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the medieval Arabic world through to the scattered European Renaissance scientists working in near isolation, today's field is more of a cross discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists and scientific knowledge of many specialty sciences.
A person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or "natural historian".
Read more about Natural History: History, Museums, Societies
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or history:
“In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in. Within me is no disturbing interplay now, but only the steady currents of adaptation and of sympathy.”
—Haniel Long (1888–1956)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)