Depicting Species: The Role of the Image in Modern Biology 1750-1950

ended

This project investigates the visual cultures of zoological systematics informed by practices, techniques, genres, ideas, materiality, norms, producers, and audiences. Approaching systematics through its rich pictorial legacy, I explore how thinking through images in using them as research tools produces distinct species concepts and how images used as training or teaching devices informed species concepts. The timeframe of this investigation spans three centuries and explores two hundred years of biological research between Linnaeus’ first attempt to standardize zoological nomenclature in 1758 and the “Modern Synthesis” of evolution and heredity in the 1930s and 1940s. On the basis of the empirical examination of archival collections and printed materials, I examine the functions, production, and usage of zoological illustrations within biological research (objective 1) and follow their circulation among lay audiences (objective 2). I will approach the material from an interdisciplinary perspective. This involves first an iconographic method as a foundation for a comparative evaluation. I draw here on both scientific and artistic practices. Second, I embed the production of zoological illustrations within the framework of cooperative knowledge production between different groups of actors stemming from different intellectual, educational, social, and national backgrounds. This will be the first study of the transformation of pictorial scientific practices in systematics between 1750 and 1950 and how they redefined the boundary between expert and lay audiences. The book resulting from this research will draw a vivid panorama of scientific knowledge production carried out by zoologist, artists, technicians, and amateur scientist.