[Nhcoll-l] Words and things

[Paul J. Morris]

As Bob Linsley used to say in his undergraduate historical geology and
paleontology courses, paleontology is the study of the entire history
of life, biology is the tiny subset of paleontology which just
considers life in the present...


I tend to refer to the natural sciences and to natural science collections, but those phrases, like biogeosciences, also include minerology and geology as well as studies of living systems.

-Paul

On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 14:27:41 +0000
"Callomon,Paul" <prc44 at drexel.edu> wrote:

> Colleagues,
> 
> I am hunting around for a word that describes the time-neutral study
> of life on Earth. "Paleontology" and "Biology" are both time-specific
> (the former explicitly, the latter by usage) and "integrated biology"
> is not clear. Is there a word that means "the study of life
> regardless of time"?
> 
> Paul Callomon
> Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
> ________________________________
> Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
> 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
> callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax
> 215-299-1170
> 


-- 
Paul J. Morris
Biodiversity Informatics Manager
Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, Harvard University
mole at morris.net  AA3SD  PGP public key available