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- Convenors:
-
Brita Brenna
(University of Oslo)
Anne Folke Henningsen (University of Copenhagen)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Historical Approaches
- Location:
- B2.41
- Sessions:
- Friday 9 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
We are interested in the history of natural history. Not only of knowledge claims and the evidence to support them but also of methods, genres, practices, and "ways of knowing". We query how natural history from ca.1800 got entangled with different ways of knowing, f.x. folklore & ethnology .
Long Abstract:
The uncertainties of the afterlives of natural history
In the eighteenth century natural history was a genre and a method for investigating, systematizing and collecting the whole of nature, often including humans. The end of natural history, it has been proclaimed, took place at the beginning of the 19th century when different disciplines took up the study of different aspects of nature and culture (Lepenesis 1976).
In this panel we are interested in the history of natural history. Not only of knowledge claims and the evidence to support them but also of methods, genres, practices, and "ways of knowing" (Pickstone 2000). By inquiring into natural history, its methods, genres, conceptualizations and practices, and identifying which of these aspects still lurk within and between the disciplines, the panel seeks to identify and query what happened to natural history, and how its practices and methods have been entangled with and formative of different ways of knowing in for example folklore and ethnology - but also in different branches of study of nature. We are seeking to discuss how the nature and culture divide has been less prevalent and functional than stories of the disciplines have presumed. In the end the question is what are the uncertainties of the history of natural history - as a concept and practice?
Lepenies, Wolf. 1976. Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten in denWissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich
Pickstone, John V. 2000. Ways of knowing: A new history of science, technology and medicine. Manchester..
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 9 June, 2023, -Andreas Lipowsky (Leibniz-Center for Literary and Cultural Research)
Paper short abstract:
My talk examines British colonial ethnography based on the 'Notes and Queries' (1874) as torn between the theory of cultural evolutionism and an empirical methodology based on natural history. PLEASE NOTE: Due to a time conflict, I won’t be able to attend the conference on June 10th, 2023.
Paper long abstract:
In 'Primitive Culture' (1871), E.B. Tylor conceptualizes his “science of culture” in the image of two competing disciplines. Cultural evolution is modeled on the “sciences of inorganic nature” as, to Tylor, “our thoughts, wills, and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the motion of waves.” Meanwhile, he casts ethnography in the image of natural history and its classificatory practices. This latter aspect of Tylor’s ‘science’ is the basis for the publication of the 'Notes and Queries on Anthropology' in 1974, a handbook of research queries for the discerning colonial traveler, tasked by a committee of the British Society for the Advancement of Science (chaired by Tylor) to “dissect” the cultural traits of the empire’s conquered indigenous populations and “to classify them into their proper groups.”
While few investigations into the 'Notes and Queries' exist (Urry 1972, Stocking 2001), inquiry into the extensive ethnographic literature produced on its basis is even scarcer. As I will show with the help of E.H. Mans 'The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands' (1883) this literature may significantly broaden our understanding of victorian anthropology: Conventional histories of anthropological thought place cultural evolutionism at the center of the historical discipline. Ethnographies of the time, however, emulated the classificatory procedures of natural history. As both systems are only partially commensurate, my investigation aims to reveal the inherent contradictions of the ‘science of culture’ in the aftermath of Tylor.
Michele Tita (University of Tartu)
Paper short abstract:
Showing a few examples from natural history museums and ethnography from Italy and Scotland, this paper aims to illustrate the differentiation of knowledge regarding the nature-culture divide – embraced mostly in academic contexts – of people and institutions with different backgrounds and aims.
Paper long abstract:
After the birth of the contemporary academic disciplines of biology and anthropology between the 19th and the 20th century, the term “natural history” has been progressively abandoned, except for its usage in museal institutions and associations.
The absence of natural history programmes in universities and the long-lasting existence of natural history museums shows the different approaches that knowledge institutions have adopted when it comes to dividing the studies of nature from the so-called human sciences.
The nature-culture divide has been in fact prominent in some academic institutions, mostly in the realm of human and social sciences (Guillo 2015). On the other hand, the idea of this divide seems to be rejected by scientists (ibid.), as well as within new approaches and perspectives in the humanities. Also, it seems not to have been embraced fully outside of the academic environment.
Showing a few examples from natural history museums and ethnographic materials from Italy and Scotland, this paper attempts to show the persistence of an idea of undivided “natural history”, which merges humans and nature within the same historical and conceptual domain.
The paper also aims to illustrate the differentiation of knowledge regarding the nature-culture divide, an approach that has been sometimes embraced, sometimes contested, and sometimes ignored by people and institutions with different backgrounds and aims.
Guillo, Dominique. 2015. ‘Quelle place faut-il faire aux animaux en sciences sociales ?’ Revue francaise de sociologie Vol. 56 (1): 135–63.
Siv Frøydis Berg (National Library of Norway)
Paper short abstract:
How does Goethe conceptualize and investigate natural history in the second Act of Faust II? By following the destiny of the artificial creature Homunculus, and focus on the mythical figures he meets, I will try to shed light on Goethe’s idea of Was die Welt im innersten zusammenhält.
Paper long abstract:
In the second act of Goethe’s Faust II, published postmortem in 1832, a strange trio leaves the laboratory scene of artificial human creation: the paralyzed Faust, the devil Mephisto and the half-creature” Homunculus, a spirit without a body, equipped with all knowledge in the world but captured in a glass phial. They travel through the air, through space and time “towards southeast”, to Classic Walpurgis Night – a festival of universal creation in Thessaly (Rehder, 1955), at the banks of the river Peneios, seen by the ancients as the land of magic par excellence. It is inhabited by amongst others Thessalian witches, the Earth God Seismos (invented by Goethe), and other characters from classical myths and folklore, like sphinxes, griffs and sirens. Here, too, are the natural philosophers Thales and Anaxagoras. Each traveler has its own agenda.
In this session, I will investigate how Goethe conceptualizes and investigates natural history in this highly allegorical and complex piece, by following the rise and fall of the artificial creature Homunculus. Why did he need to travel to this place to break the glass and return to nature? What are the roles of the mythical figures he meets? Which figures did comment upon and describe him, who did he speak to? It seems like Goethe gathered all necessary expertise to help the trio fulfil their different tasks, and for the audience to realize was die Welt im innersten zusammenhält.
Line Esborg (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
How has natural history influenced the knowledge history of folklore? My paper will give a historical perspective on the “methodological” commons in these knowledge fields that are normally seen as separated and divergent.
Paper long abstract:
Methods with a deep connection to natural history seem to have played an important role in informing the methods and genres of what became the study of folklore in Norway. The Norwegian Folklore Archives contains the works of pioneers of what can be called both a folkloristic discipline and a folkloristic movement. This pioneering work was closely connected to the collection work of naturalists at natural history museums.
I am interested in investigating these connections in the 19th century, taking Peter Christen Asbjørnsen’s (1812-1885) work, which shows a concurrent parallel interest in both folklore and natural history, as a point of departure.
Kamila Gesikowska (University of Silesia in Katowice)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will explore the concepts concerning civilisation, nature and their impact on human development introduced by Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838) in his theory of organic beings.
Paper long abstract:
The paper will explore the concepts concerning civilisation, nature and their impact on human development introduced by Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838) – physician, chemist, biologist, and an influential thinker of the Polish Enlightenment.
Śniadecki witnessed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's fall and partitions (1795) and the unsuccessful efforts to rebuild the country as an independent European state (Napoleonic wars, November uprising). The loss of independence profoundly impacted scientific life, not only in the gradual loss of legally functioning scientific institutions. Keeping the traditional (national) differences alive was often challenged by the concept of civilisation, understood as transnational, homogenous, and even – in the face of partitions – threatening. This stance was problematic for Polish scientists, who had to view man as a universal being and base their research on general scientific knowledge. However, the uncertainties around that area gave Śniadecki an interesting insight into the problem of nature and civilisation. In his influential work, "Teorya jestestw organicznych" [Theory of Organic Beings] (vol. 1: 1804; vol 2: 1811), he investigated the theories behind the functioning of the human body and mind and the impact of nature and civilisation on them. Treating civilisation as a necessary driving force in human history, he based his theory on organic concepts, linking the development of muscles and the nervous system with specific steps in the advancement of humankind.
The paper will present research results concerning Śniadecki's theory of organic beings as an important proposition of early theoretical approach in Polish cultural sciences.
Tine Damsholt (University of Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
Examining the Danish historian Christian Molbech's 'Travels in my native country' from 1811-15 this paper will discuss the complex transition from understanding landscape within logics of natural history to more national and romantic notions and new entanglement of history, people and landscape.
Paper long abstract:
Examining the Danish historian Christian Molbech's “Ungdomsvandringer i mit Fødeland” (Youth wanderings in my native country) published 1811-15 this paper will discuss the complex and ambivalent transition from understanding the Danish landscape within logics of natural history to more national and romantic perceptions of the fatherland and especially the new entanglement of history, people and landscape. Molbech was one of the first national tourists to describe the aesthetic and experiential values of the Danish landscape – nature was emotionalized and historicized. His text is thus an example of how a distinct way of knowing and sensing nature understood as an emotional and ‘peopled’ landscape (i.e. inhabited by past and present national subjects) emerges in descriptions and paintings in the first decades of 19th-century. However, different versions of the entanglement of history, landscape, and temporality as well as culture and nature are articulated and practiced during the journeys.
Anne Folke Henningsen (University of Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
Taking the ethnographic sound collection at the National Museum of Denmark as my point of departure, I will reflect upon the possible challenges to classificatory ethnographic knowledge projects informed by natural history that the unruly voices on the recordings in the collection can pose.
Paper long abstract:
Collection and exhibition practices in ethnographic museums in the 19th and 20th centuries owe to a large extent their classificatory, ordering and hierarchizing efforts to natural history. The large anthropometric endeavours in the late 19th and early 20th century aimed at describing and classifying the peoples of the world were an integral part of this practice, and systematic measurements and descriptions of cranial form, skin tone, eye colour and body shape (etc.) were carried out in a grandiose aim at mapping the world’s population. Eventually and as technology allowed, also photographs and sound recordings became part of the project.
In this paper I will reflect upon the role and position of sound recordings in ethnographic knowledge projects informed by the belief that scientific value to a large extent rested on neat and pure ethnic-racial division and classification of human beings. How – if at all – was it possible to include the individual voices of the recorded people in the efforts to map out the typical? Can the potentially unruly voices featured in the recordings escape or challenge the neatness of the classificatory systems they were collected within?
Taking the ethnographic sound collection at the National Museum of Denmark as my point of departure, I will address which uncertainties in an anthropometric knowledge project that is informed by the logics of natural history the ethnographic sound archive possibly can make visible – or perhaps indeed audible.
Brita Brenna (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
Scientific expeditions to the Spitsbergen archipelago around 1900 performed surveys of water, ground, air and ice. They prospected for minerals, discovered new land – and wrote stories. This paper investigates if and how the times of nature and the times of culture were entangled in these histories.
Paper long abstract:
How is natural and cultural histories interwoven in the records from the Arctic and what can they tell about how the participants experienced their mission as storytellers from a no-mans land? With the reports from the Beer Island, located midway between North-Norway and Spitsbergen as example, this paper will look at how stories of men, animals, geology and biology were entangled in the expedition reports. As a genre these reports could encompass natural and cultural histories. At the same time establishing a division between human and natural history became all the more important in the disciplinary formations at universities. How and if these disciplinary divisions were important, and the ways of organising the knowledge and experiences in the narratives will be discussed. The texts that will be investigated are Swedish and Norwegian travelogues and articles in journals that reports from the Beer Island at a time were the run for the Arctic was at its peak. Theoretically the paper is inspired by the discussions following upon among others Dipesh Chakrabarty's plea for a new approach to the writing of history, were the drastic changes in natural environments begs an entanglement of times of nature and culture.