ZusammenfassungDie Humanembryologische Dokumentationssammlung Blechschmidt, entstanden an der Universität Göttingen im Zeitraum von 1942 bis etwa 1970, stellt eine einmalige Kombination histologischer Schnittserien menschlicher Embryonen und darauf aufbauender, großformatiger und öffentlich zugänglicher Modelle dar. Nicht nur erfolgte diese Sammlungsgründung für die Disziplin der Humanembryologie erstaunlich spät, sondern ist auch in einer zweiten Hinsicht bemerkenswert: Während an anderen Standorten Modelle primär als Forschungsobjekte verstanden wurden und mit einem Lehreinsatz eine Umnutzung stattfand, war für den Göttinger Embryologen Erich Blechschmidt (1904–1992) von Beginn an (...) ein pädagogischer Impetus maßgeblich. Im Beitrag werden die eigenwilligen Merkmale der Blechschmidt’schen Unternehmung vor ihrem disziplinären Hintergrund herausgearbeitet. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf den beiden für die Humanembryologie zentralen Praktiken des Sammelns und Modellierens und den dadurch in Göttingen geschaffenen Objektbeständen. Diese waren schon im Entstehungsprozess von einem besonderen Spannungsverhältnis von Individualität und Universalität geprägt, das sich auch in der späteren Nutzung der Sammlung spiegelt. Diese führt durch eine spezifische Individualisierung zuvor anonym gemachter Präparate weit aus der ursprünglichen fachwissenschaftlich-anatomischen Bestimmung in die breite gesellschaftliche Debatte um den ethischen Status menschlicher Embryonen und den Schwangerschaftsabbruch. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The Human Embryology Collection at the Centre of Anatomy Göttingen, created between 1942 and 1970, represents a unique interrelation of histological sectional series of human embryos and large-format physical models open to the public based on them. The collection was established long after the heyday of human embryology. It is also remarkable in another aspect: while usually models within the discipline are considered research objects, Göttingen embryologist Erich Blechschmidt (1904–1992) based his understanding on a pedagogical impetus. The article highlights the (...) distinctive and unconventional features of Blechschmidt’s undertaking against its disciplinary background. My focus lies on the two practices that are central to human embryology—collecting and modelling—, as well as the derived collection stocks. The special tension between individuality and universality that already characterized the process of their creation is also reflected in the later use of the collection. This tension allowed Blechschmidt to utilize the models in embryological research and anatomical teaching as well as in the broad social debate on abortion and the ethical status of human embryos. (shrink)

In 1859, Harvard botanist Asa Gray (1810–1888) published an essay of what he called “the abstract of Japan botany.” In it, he applied Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory to explain why strong similarities could be found between the flora of Japan and that of eastern North America, which provoked his famous debate with Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) and initiated Gray’s efforts to secure a place for Darwinian biology in the American sciences. Notably, although the Gray–Agassiz debate has become one of the most (...) thoroughly studied scientific debates, historians of science remain unable to answer one critical question: How was Gray able to acquire specimens from Japan? Making use of previously unknown archival materials, this article scrutinizes the institutional, instrumental, financial, and military settings that enabled Gray’s collector, Charles Wright (1811–1885), to travel to Japan, as well as examine Wright’s collecting practices in Japan. I argue that it is necessary to examine Gray’s diagnosis of Japan’s flora and the subsequent debate about it from the viewpoint of field sciences. The field-centered approach not only unveils an array of historical significances that have been overshadowed by the analytical framework of the Darwinian revolution and the reception of Darwinism, but also places a seemingly domestic incident in a transnational context. (shrink)

Why and how have lay people participated in scientific observation? And on what terms have they collaborated with experts and professionals? We have become accustomed to the involvement of lay observers in the practice of many branches of science, including both the natural and human sciences, usually as subordinates to experts. The current surge of interest in this phenomenon, as well as in the closely related topic of how expertise has been constructed, suggests that historians of science can offer a (...) valuable contribution to these vital questions. A historical approach to lay participation allows us to better understand the making of expert-lay relations in science, and it offers a broader, long-term perspective on contemporary debates about that boundary. (shrink)

In recent decades, an increasing interest in the dynamics of collections has brought to view how objects circulate as parts of networks of knowledge and how collections can acquire new meanings. Introducing this special issue on Collections, Knowledge, and Time, we want to shift focus from geographical circulation towards the temporal dynamics of collections: the layering and interweaving of asynchronous temporalities as collections are preserved, frozen, reinterpreted, sampled, and destroyed over time, and how these temporalities constitute knowledge potentials. We treat (...) collections broadly across museums of history of medicine, history of science, and ethnography, and scientific institutions including biobanks, seed banks, and fly centres, to investigate the considerable overlap in collection practices, as well as how objects can move between cultural historical and scientific uses. We limit ourselves, however, to epistemic collections, mainly scientific ones, assembled with research as a main purpose. This introduction first explores apparently mundane collection practices such as preservation and care, as well as technologies such as freezers and boxes, to unravel them as temporal practices that make stored items transcend time. We then discuss historical practices across cultural and scientific collections to show how historical thinking plays a central part in scientific collection work and how new scientific methods shape investigations of the past. Finally, we outline the potentialities for future knowledge in collections. In conclusion, we sketch out a pluralist epistemology of collections focusing specifically on how the dynamics of time create multiple epistemic potentials for historical scholarship and scientific research in the present and future. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a window to the (...) modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences. (shrink)

Section:ChooseTop of pageAbstract < (...) this paper analyses the correspondence between Berro and the Swiss pharmacist and landowner Teodoro Stuckert (1852–1932), who settled in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. Both of them began to assemble botanical collections in the 1890s, and maintained an intense correspondence for nearly 20 years, which provides insights into the practices of a vocational botanist from a rural area in the Rio de la Plata and the role of the network created to exchange specimens, data, and publications within South America as well as with Europe. (shrink)

This paper examines how communities of naturalists in mid-nineteenth-century Britain were formed and solidified around the shared practices of public meetings, the publication and reading of periodicals, and the making and printing of images. By focusing on communities of naturalists and the sites of their communication, this article undermines the distinction between amateur and professional scientific practice. Building on the notion of imagined communities, this paper also shows that in some cases the editors and illustrators utilized imagery to construct a (...) specifically British naturalist community. Following three ‘amateur’ natural-history periodicals (Science Gossip,Midland Naturalistand theJournal of the Quekett Microscopical Club) the article demonstrates how the production and reproduction of natural history in the nineteenth century was contingent on community debate – and that this debate both was highly visual and moved across printed and geographical boundaries. This paper investigates images both for their purported success and for their ascribed value to natural history. Additionally, it considers the debates over their limitations and alleged failures of printing. Altogether, the article argues that investigating the communal practices of observation, writing, drawing and engraving allows for a better understanding of the shared practices of nineteenth-century natural history. (shrink)

In 1926, François Machon, a Swiss physician who lived for many years in Argentina, organised the restitution of a religious garment that had been stolen from the cathedral of Paraguay in the late 1860s and was kept in the Swiss Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel (MEN) in exchange for a small part of his ethnographic collection. In the following decade, he donated more of his own collections to the MEN, but also negotiated as a go-between for the donation of his son (...) Roger's collections. On one occasion he managed, again, to arrange the exchange of a proto-historic Swiss lake-dweller axe for a small collection of Amerindian artefacts. The Machons' case sheds light on the logics of donations of a private collection holder, his tactics and strategies of persuasion, and his entangled web of affects, straddling two countries and two networks of fidelity in a context of migration. It also helps us understand the complex rationalities of acquisition and the polysemy of a peripheral municipal cultural institution. This case informs us about the rationales of a peripheral museum and on the criteria used to assess the quality of donators and their collections; it illustrates the asymmetry of the exchange values of European and South American, ancient and contemporary, artefacts, and the unequal vocality of the different actors. Similarly, it gives us a perspective on the rationales that were mobilised to justify giving away parts of its collections. The exchange of artefacts between the Machons and the MEN helps us understand museums not only as patrimonial of scientific institutions, but also as economic actors, whose agents convince, gamble, bargain, and negotiate, and try to make best use of their resources, symbolic and monetary, to increase their assets and social benefits. (shrink)

This special issue of Centaurus brings together historians from Latin America and Europe to trace the history of some scientific collections and museums, in order to reassess their significance and to draw a more nuanced international geography of the sciences. Our dossier focuses on “provincial” natural history and archaeology museums and collections. For the sake of simplicity, we use the term “provincial” to qualify these “peripheral” spaces that encompassed colonial and post-colonial territories as well as the European provincial regions, but (...) the label is only a convention as some of these collections were sometimes displayed in national capitals. Focusing on objects, people, or institutions, with case studies from Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, Brazil, Northern Italy, Catalonia, and Switzerland, the articles gathered here reveal the scholarly practices and sociability of the many collectors, brokers, and go-betweens acting in the “provinces,” especially those of the amateurs. These essays show the relevance of the history of provincial collections to the wider history of scientific museums. Indeed, the shift of focus from the major institutions of the metropolitan capitals to the many collections and museums created in less central cities and regions sheds light on many issues that have remained in the background within the more centrally focused historiography. (shrink)

Documenting and Describing. The Epistemic Function of Psychiatric Records, their Archiving and Reinterpretation into Case Histories. The paper attempts to reconstruct the writing of published case histories. Due to the establishment of a scientific classification system in psychiatry there were at the Charité several changes from the late 1870s onwards: (1) Not only was the documentation in the clinical records altered significantly, but also (2) the archive was reorganized into a double filing system and (3) the casuistic made a development (...) from describing seldom or sensational cases into a mode which aimed to unfold psychiatric theory through ‘typical cases’. Original medical records, the internal documentation of psychiatric observation, will be compared to their published version. Both, the narrative of a case study and the documentation in the clinical records reveal performative processes of observation and documentation. (shrink)