Viewing Nature 200 Years Apart: George Sinclair 1816 | Julian Opie 2016
George Sinclair
Hortus Gramineus Wöburnensis:, 1816
3161-BK
Hortus Gramineus Wöburnensis: Or, An Account of the Results of Experiments on the Produce and Nutrive Qualities of Different Grasses, and Other Plants, Used as the Food of the More Valuable Domestic Animals: Instuted By John Duke of Bedford.
Sinclair’s experiment provided the foundation of Darwin’s “principle of divergence,†a building block of his theory of evolution by natural selection, by illuminating a central question in ecology and evolution: How is diversity of species in the natural world maintained? Darwin referred to Sinclair’s experiment in On the Origin of Species (1859), but did not mention Sinclair’s name or cite his work, and it was only recently discovered that Sinclair’s Hortus gramineus worburnensis was the source of Darwin’s knowledge (see Andy Hector and Rowan Hooper, “Darwin and the first ecological experiment,†Science Magazine 295, no. 5555 [25 Jan. 2002]: 639-40).
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