Utility in Natural History: Some Eighteenth-century Russian Perceptions of the Living Environment
Attitudes towards the living natural environment are examined with respect to two eighteenth- century Russian naturalists: Stepan Krasheninnikov and Petr Rychkov. Both men spent long years studying the natural history and human geography or ethnography of what were then frontier and little- known parts of the Russian empire: the Kamchatka peninsula in Krasheninnikov's case and Orenburg Territory in that of Rychkov. The paper accents a common feature of the work of the two Russians and of other eighteenthcentury naturalists, namely their emphasis on the utility of natural phenomena. The work of the two is contrasted and set into the context of eighteenth- century natural history more generally. It is suggested that the emphasis on utility may derive as much from the attempt to understand an unfamiliar environment as from the more pragmatic attitude towards nature which was becoming usual at the time.