Grand design(er)s: David Moore, natural theology and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, 1838-1879

Abstract

Geographers have increasingly been investigating the role of space in the regulation and constitution of a range of scientific discourses from historical studies of natural history societies and zoological gardens to analyses of contemporary biotechnology industries. It is abundantly clear that geographical location and the spatial relationships underpinning such institutions form more than the material stage on which scientific activity takes place. These socially produced spaces themselves, and their internal and external connectivities, play an important role in the establishment and warranting of knowledge claims to specific interpretations of the natural world. Moreover, historically institutions such as botanical gardens not only displayed prevalent systems of taxonomic regulation; they also became sites for the investigation of order in the natural world. This paper investigates the relationship between David Moore's role as curator of Dublin's botanical garden and his delivery of an anti-evolution lecture in Belfast in 1874. For Moore, the structuring of the scientific garden and the botanical discourse attending plant life there revealed the workings of a beneficent designer and thus was a material expression of a natural theology. The classifying of plants into families, the orderly fashioning of the beds, the display of exotics in the hothouses all facilitated a particular reading of designed nature which confirmed his commitment to the existence of a divine designer, and this reading of nature was popularly translated in his Belfast lecture.