“Entomological Ideas”, Seeing Insects with the Eyes of Love

This year we celebrate the bicentenary of Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), naturalist and man of letters from Provence nicknamed the “Insect Virgil”, who Insect memories Enjoyed a global audience. However, it is not this circumstance that motivates the publication of the broad survey by Thibaud Martinetti on the history and generalization of entomology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from Memoirs of serving the history of insects (1734-1742) from Reaumur to bee life (1901) by Maurice Maeterlinck.

If the author devotes an entire chapter to Fabre, it is a less accidental reason which is the origin of his enterprise. Sensitive to the fate of threatened biodiversity – it’s hard to pinpoint which insect species are disappearing – this young researcher from the University of Neuchâtel embarked on a project that echoes a contemporary concern. His thesis, which he defended at the University of Basel, considers a commitment that today extends through biology, philosophy and literature, in favor of a science that abandons the empirical and objective paradigm in favor of a relationship with biology that takes into account the interdependence between man and the natural environment.