I consider myself a "scientific naturalist" as described by Doug Futuyma (and as introduced to me by Noah Whiteman): "I think of a scientific naturalist as a person with a deep and broad familiarity with one or more groups of organisms or ecological communities, who can draw on her knowledge of systematics, distribution, life histories, behavior, and perhaps physiology and morphology to inspire ideas, to evaluate hypotheses, to intelligently design research with an awareness of organisms' special peculiarities. Even more, perhaps, he is the person who is inexhaustibly fascinated by biological diversity, and who does not view organisms merely as models, or vehicles for theory but, rather, as the raison d'etre for biological investigation, as the Ding an sich, the thing in itself, that excites our admiration and our desire for knowledge, understanding, and preservation."
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