Perfecting the nation: Enlightenment perspectives on the coincidence of linguistic and ‘national’ refinement
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Archiv für September 2016
Ayako Sakurai, Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main, (Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century 20) London: Pickering & Chatto 2013. xi, 235 S., Ill., $ 99,00. ISBN 978-1-84893-397-2.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601797
Arno Schubbach, Die Genese des Symbolischen. Zu den Anfängen von Ernst Cassirers Kulturphilosophie, (Cassirer-Forschungen 16) Hamburg: Meiner 2016. 465 S., € 98,00. ISBN 978-3-7873-2814-7.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601798
Nick Hopwood, Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press 2015. vii, 388 S., Ill., geb., $ 45,00. ISBN 978-0-226-04694-5.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601800
Die Neuordnung pflanzengeografischen Wissens als „Transitzone“ Wallacea. Ein amerikanisches Expansionsprojekt auf den Philippinen, 1902–1928
The Reshaping of Phytogeographical Knowledge as the “Transition zone” Wallacea: An American Expansion Project in the Philippines, 1902–1928. This paper examines the development of a concept that to this day plays an important role in biogeography: the region Wallacea. Focussing on the work of the American tropical botanist Elmer D. Merrill in the Philippines, I argue that his research on the geographical movement and settlement of Philippine plants reflects a shift in the United States’ scientific and cultural understanding of the Pacific area towards a notion of “American tropics”. While inventorying plants for the American administration from 1901 to 1923, the composition of Philippine flora prompted Merrill to question biogeographical regionalization in Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. Not being able to situate the Philippine flora within “Asian” or “Australasian” biota, Merrill described the islands as an area of trans-regional plant migration. Together with the paleontologist Roy E. Dickerson, he later conceptualized the region Wallacea as biogeographical “transition zone” between the Philippines and Australia. In addition to the scientific conceptualization, Wallacea constitutes a space between two biogeographical subregions, whose flora was considered as being part of both, but could not be unambiguously attributed to either of these regions. In this respect, the plants resembled the inhabitants of the United States’ insular overseas territories, who were legally defined neither as aliens nor as citizens. In this sense, Wallacea embodies epistemic as well as geopolitical boundaries, while its case also illustrates some of the ways in which colonial interests in the usability of plants found expression in botanical research during the early period of American overseas expansion.
Verpacken, verkaufen, verschenken: Hans Sauters entomologische Praktiken zwischen Formosa und Europa, 1902–1914
Parcels, Sales and Gifts: Hans Sauter’s Entomological Practices between Formosa and Europe, 1902–1914. The exploration of global biodiversity is a form of knowledge production that is necessarily specimen-based. In the endeavor to chart the natural world, not only ideas and writings travelled across the oceans, but also a flood of scientific objects. The German entomologist Hans Sauter (1871–1943) spent most of his life in Formosa, then a Japanese colony. His pronounced aim was to complete an inventory of the entire fauna of Formosa. He aimed for the mass production of knowledge, becoming a collecting-entrepreneur who employed scores of local collectors. Between 1902 and 1914, they amassed large quantities of insects, which required specialized practices in collecting, preserving, documenting, and packaging. Sauter sent these insects, but also hundreds of reptiles, mammals, birds, fish etc., to zoologists all over Europe who identified and published hitherto undescribed species. At first, Sauter sold his finds. Later, he stopped asking for money – pushing instead for speed in publication and making demands about the content and naming of these articles. His demands were met, especially by the Deutsches Entomologisches Museum in Dahlem. Despite almost no publications to his name, Sauter quickly gained considerable influence in the world of entomological research. In this paper, the circulation of these scientific objects serves as a focal point in order to embed local circumstances in the process of knowledge production in a global context. The practices associated with the specimens illustrate the economic, political and social dimensions of the formation of knowledge. Hans Sauter’s case defies traditional dichotomies as it illustrates the interdependence of practical and theoretical knowledge, of science and trade and of center and periphery. Practical knowledge gained in a local setting in Formosa allowed Sauter to amass large amounts of insect specimens, a resource he used to steer the course of scientific practice in Europe.
Titelbild:(Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 3/2016)
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201680301
Inhaltsverzeichnis: Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 3/2016
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201680311