History of scientific expeditions

The concept of association is centre stage in ecological studies on coral reefs. It describes the specific composition of diverse coral species in a given reef section that depends, among other factors, on the type of surf and the form of the seabed. ‘Association’ is also an important concept in Bruno Latour's plea for transcending the division between humans and objects in sociological analysis. Drawing on the idea of association, the article explores the history of the corals that were moved from the northern Cuban coast to East-Berlin in the late 1960s and worked into a coral reef diorama exhibited in East Berlin's Natural History Museum in 1974. By focusing on the mobilisation of the corals between Cuba and the GDR as well as within the museum, I will show that far from being sharply defined objects of nature, the corals collected in Cuba and displayed in East-Berlin must be understood as parts of constantly changing heterogeneous associations of organisms, non-organic material, national politics, postcolonial economies and institutional politics.

Doscientos años después de la publicación de la primera edición de la novela Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo, diversos estudios han vuelto a revisar el texto y a explorar diferentes aspectos como, por ejemplo, su bagaje científico. Los estudios realizados, sin embargo, no contextualizan los debates científicos que influyeron en la obra más conocida de Mary W. Shelley ni abordan la influencia y las consecuencias que tuvo la novela para el avance del conocimiento científico. Este artículo pretende proporcionar un poco de luz sobre estos temas.

The present article addresses the Spanish and French expedition to measure the length of a meridian arc in the Vice-royalty of Peru, taking place in the first half of the 18th century.  Through the account of its many deeds and eventful happenings, the article attempts to unite the State perspective with the scientific, cultural and personal viewpoints in the setting of a great adventure. The enlightened spirit together with the military, political, patriotic and colonialist motivations that created the momentum for the Navy lieutenants Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa to undertake such a mission, are outlined in the light of a debate involving personal, geographical and conceptual ‘situatedness’, in the search of fixed points either on the Meridian line as for daily nature, expressing conditions of power, belonging and dominance. It also comes out as part of a debate between different ideological inertias, cultural clash between the diverse ethnicities of the Spanish Americas and rivalry between creoles and European Spaniards. The narration of the great deed attempts in turn to situate these problems in the ‘intellectual map’ –making use of Feijoo’s metaphor– of 18th century first decades.

Bu çalışma, son yüzyıllara kadar bilinirliğinden öte gizemli bir kavram olan “Kutupların” Osmanlı tarafından neden stratejik görülmediği ve ne derecede önemsendiği üzerinedir. Osmanlı öncesi ve Osmanlı döneminde bu gizemli bölgelerin aslında bilindiğini ama bu durumun çok önemsenmediğini, ilginç bir şekilde mitoloji, hatta çeşitli tılsımların konusu haline de geldiğini görmekteyiz. Osmanlı Devleti “Talassokratik” bir yapıya sahip olmadığından ne yazık ki Coğrafi Keşiflerden mahrum kalmış, okyanuslar ile başa çıkabilecek seviyede dirençli gemilerin inşasında pek başarılı olamamıştır. Ancak dünyaya adlarını duyuran Piri Reis, Takıyüddin ve Kâtip Çelebi gibi çok önemli bilim insanları yetiştirmiştir. O çağların haritacılığına ve fezaya (uzaya) olan merakları sonucu günümüze ulaşan oldukça önemli eserler bırakmışlardır. Nitekim konu kutuplar olunca ister istemez temel kaynaklar “Astronomi”, “Haritalar” ve “Harita Tarihi”, bir diğer kavram ile genel bağlamda “Coğrafi Bilimler” olmaktadır. Kuzey Kutbunun tamamının ve özellikle Güney Kutbunun keşfi haritacılığın gelişimi ve “Coğrafi Keşifler” ile doğrudan ilişkilidir. Coğrafi Keşiflerin başlangıcından önce “Bilinen Dünya” kavramı Batlamyus haritalarına dayanırken, keşiflerin başlamasını takiben özellikle 16. yüzyıl dolaylarında haritacılık (kartografya) oldukça büyük bir yarış haline gelerek günümüz harita biliminin temelleri atılmıştır. Duruma Osmanlı açısından bakıldığında ise “Acâ’ibü’l-mahlûkat ve Ğarâ’ibü’l-mevcûdât” gibi yazmalarda geçen tılsımlı bilgiler yerini Piri Reis’in “Kitab-ı Bahriye” ‘si ve Kâtip Çelebi’nin “Cihannümâ” ‘sı gibi bilimsel eserlere bırakmıştır. Ayrıca Kâtip Çelebi “İlhâmü'l-Mukaddes mine'l-Feyzi'l-Akdes” adlı eserinde Takıyüddin’e atıfta bulunarak kutup çevresinde (gece ve gündüzün 6 ay olduğu bölgeler şeklinde bahsederek) namaz ve oruç vakitlerini hesaplamıştır. Bu süreç batıda Batlamyus, Waldseemüller ve Ortelius gibi önemli kartografların sıkı şekilde takip edildiğini de ortaya koymaktadır. Bununla kalmayarak Takıyüddin’in “İstanbul Rasathanesi” bünyesinde kutuplar da dahil olmak üzere gezegenimiz hakkında oldukça önemli çalışmalar yapılmıştır. Bu çalışmaların en dikkat çekeni de 1581 senesinde “Şehinşehnâme” yazması içerisinde Nakkaş Osman’ın resmettiği (minyatürde) Takıyüddin’in çalıştığı İstanbul Rasathanesi bünyesinde bulunan “Dünya Küresi” ‘dir. Bu küre keşfinden çok evvel Antarktika’yı bir kara parçası şeklinde adeta bir kıta olarak göstermektedir. Tüm bu Coğrafi Keşiflerin bilincine rağmen “kutuplar” da dahil olmak üzere Osmanlı bu bölgelere herhangi bir keşif girişiminde bulunmayarak uzun bir süre sadece gelişmeleri yakından takip etmeyi uygun görmüştür. 19. yüzyıla gelindiğinde de Coğrafi Keşiflerin doyuma ulaşması ile beraber Avrupa’dan getirtilen çeşitli harita ve atlaslar tercüme edilerek çoğaltılmıştır. Bu doğrultuda çalışmamızda araştırılan arşiv belgeleri ve el yazmalarında öncelikle kutupların bilinci ve Osmanlı devletinin bu olguyu nasıl gördüğü incelenerek bu olgu üzerinden daha sonra nasıl bir strateji uyguladığı veya neden uygulamadığı ele alınacaktır.

In 1878–1879, the Swedish polar expedition under Adolf Nordenskiöld on board the Vega wintered off the arctic shore of the Chukchi Peninsula in Northeast Russia. One of many outcomes of that journey was a massive ethnographic collection of almost 1,000 objects acquired among the local Chukchi people now housed at the Etnografiska museet in Stockholm. It is the largest historical collection of its kind in Western Europe and the fourth largest from this part of the world. This paper tells the story of a pilot project aimed to explore the history of the Vega Chukchi collection over its 140-year life at various museums and to virtually ‘reunite‘ via an online database with the descendants of Indigenous people who once interacted with the Vega crew. Reconnecting historical museum collections with Indigenous experts and communities of origin is an increasingly popular path to move objects from museum drawers and to start their new life as a source of heritage knowledge, cultural pride, public education, and community empowerment. As our pilot effort revealed, it may open the way to connect major Chukchi collections in other museums via shared electronic access under the new vision of reciprocal networks (alliances), to include heritage professionals, home communities and other interested audiences.

Museums of the 19th century are temples of authenticity. The objects kept in them are material testimonies that are meant to “tell stories”. Museum architecture had the task of making these objects talk. The Alte Museum (1825 –1830, by Karl Friedrich Schinkel), the Alte Pinakothek (1826 –1836, by Leo von Klenze) and the Neue Museum (1843 –1855, by Friedrich August Stüler) are only a few stations in the development of “talking” museum architecture. Stüler’s Neues Museum in Berlin is the first museological “Gesamtkunstwerk” (“total work of art”) in which collections and decorative frames formed an inseparable artistic and thematic unity. The Natural History Museum (NHMW) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna can also be considered “Gesamtkunstwerke”: But the Viennese museum architects Gottfried Semper and Carl Hasenauer took Stüler’s idea even one step further. Whereas in Berlin the decorative
architectural program despite closest thematic ties remains a contextually fine-tuned frame to the content of the collection, in Vienna by incorporating authentic collection objects this boundary begins to blur. In the KHM three original Egyptian monolithic columns were used as structural elements in the Egyptian-Oriental exhibition room. Until now, nothing comparable was known in the NHMW. This assumption is falsified by the discovery of an original spear from the Novara Expedition, that was integrated in the former Ethnographic exhibition’s Solomon Islands caryatide
(an art historically incorrect term, but used at the time when the scupltures were created). In contrast to the columns, that were reused as architectural elements, the integrated Novara spear had
a purely decorative and narrative function. The spear becomes part of the “talking” architectural decoration. The integration of historically important specimens surely had the purpose to underline the museum’s claim as an inviolable scientific authority dedicated to authenticity. However,
as the analysis of the Solomon Islands caryatide also impressively demonstrates, (despite integrating an authentic spear) the figure does not follow slavishly its photographic and collection templates. Especially during the “translation” of the photography into the figure “errors” occurred – a phenomenon that can also be seen in other caryatides. These “translation errors” combined with the fact that the spear seems to have been intentionally modified to look like the “prototype of a Solomon Islands spear” suggest that the decoration program did not feel exclusively committed to scientific exactness. It rather had the task of arousing astonishment and curiosity in the visitor through a combination of authenticity and narrative freedom.

Durante el siglo XVIII neogranadino la práctica del dibujo significó una verdadera revolución. A
partir de los postulados de Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes sobre la importancia de saber
dibujar para el adelanto de las artes y las ciencias, se abrió paso a una práctica social de las artes
que convergió con los planes de reforma educativa en el Virreinato y los postulados de José
Celestino Mutis sobre la importancia de realizar un estudio sistemático de la naturaleza
americana.
En la presente conferencia se tratarán algunos temas relacionados con el dibujo como motor de la
observación científica, en relación con las transformaciones sociales que acompañaron el
establecimiento de la Expedición Botánica. Se tratarán aspectos vinculados al uso del arte en la
construcción del conocimiento científico y la importancia de la Oficina de Pintores para el
conocimiento botánico. Finalmente se tratarán problemas sobre la representación de la flora
americana y cómo las necesidades artísticas llevaron a un debato sobre los usos económicos de la
naturaleza.

北疆博物院由法国耶稣会桑志华（Emile Licent）神父（1876-1952）于1914年筹备建立，是民国时代天津市的重要科研机构和公共博物馆。北疆博物院自1942年始因战乱的原因而关闭，但其原址及其内部设施几乎原封不动地被保留下来，及至2016年才被重新装修并对外开放。北疆博物院原来的规划和设计备受学界和公众赞赏。本文根据桑志华本人的著作及民国时代的档案资料，在藏品建立、博物馆教育工作和学术科研三个方面探讨当年北疆博物院的办馆方式和服务民众的理念。北疆博物馆实现了以藏品和科研为核心的博物馆建设工作，提升了当年津、京两地的学术气氛，并对中国古生物学、自然科学和考古学等学科的发展起到了重要的推动作用，在中国近代学术史和博物馆发展史上均曾作出重要的贡献。

The expansion of the utilitarian science and the accession of the Bourbons to the throne had a great impact on the Spain of the Enlightment Era. While most of the actions undertaken across the Pyrenees, were in imitation of the French enterprises, the exploitation of the natural resources of the New World did not follow the physiocratic standards peculiar to France. The Spanish efforts concentrated on studying American vegetables with medicinal virtues, in order to get the commercial monopoly of some plants-like cinchona-essential to the treatment of some diseases. This singular and utopian plan, its history, its development and its conclusion are examined here, and the obtained results are estimated with regards to the original programmes, worked out by the persons in charge of the Spanish scientific policy of the second half of the 18th century. Résumé Essor de la science utilitaire et arrivée des Bourbons sur le trône marquent profondément l'Espagne des

This paper offers a new perspective on historical understandings of the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body, by studying the way that British explorers of tropical Africa drank alcohol and wrote about drink between c.1850 and c.1910. We demonstrate that alcohol was simultaneously classified as a medicinal, a preventative and a pleasurable drink, shaped by competing medical theories, but that distinctions between these different roles were highly blurred. We also show how many explorers thought certain drinks helped to protect white bodies from the effects of tropical diseases. While popular amongst travellers, these views came under growing scrutiny in the latter part of the nineteenth century, reflecting both changing scientific views about the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body and the development of a much larger European presence in tropical Africa. However, even those who opposed tropical drinking often supported the use of other stimulants and vi...

The drawings from the Royal Botanical Expedition to Nueva Granada (1783-1816) are taken as an example of the genre of the depiction of nature. Nevertheless, their content goes beyond the specific task of a scientific endeavour. It is usually appointed the importance of botanic observation on those works for the evident collaboration between the scientist and the artist. That aspect reminds the idea of the art as ancilla ecclesiae but –in this case- as the servant of science. But the depth of the Painters Workshop work presents a situation in which the drawings seem to have the object to replace the living samples ¿it is appropriate to narrow the gaze of this exceptional group to the idea of scientific illustration? With the reduction of their work to illustrations ¿are we not denying the art contribution to the science as it would be ancilla scientiae? If we think according to the rigid historiographical classifications, the answer if affirmative; if thinking on a broader sense, then is the opposite. The work with images as sources, together with the writing ones, suppose a notion of the visual that mixes art and science since those botanical drawings present a problem of knowledge trough images. Therefore, an example of visual epistemology

In the first half of the eighteenth century, Newton is slowly establishing himself on the European continent. Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis is seen as his first French disciple. Struck by the rigor and the validity of the law of attraction, he seeks a way to defend it against its detractors. He thus begins working on the polemical issue of the earth's shape. While Cartesians thought the earth was flattened at the equator, Newton suggested it was flattened at the poles. Assessing the importance of experiments and observations, in 1736–1737 Maupertuis prepares an expedition to Lapland to prove that the earth is indeed oblate and not elongated. In his accounts of the expedition he develops something that can be called a rhetoric of empiricism emphasizing practices of replication and reproducibility. In this paper, I intend to show first how Maupertuis not merely adopted Newtonian ideas but also appropriated and transformed them. We will then see how the observations of the expedition were strongly criticized after the report was published. Some readers highlighted the limits of empiricism and raised the issue of the observations being burdened by theories. Maupertuis developed various strategies to counter attack and defend the reliability of the expedition's results. This paper challenges the traditional interpretation of the expedition as a mere battle for Newtonianism while developing an entangled history of empiricism. The establishment of empirical science in early modern Europe was the result of a dialog combining different empirical traditions including but not limited to rational mathematical-geometric reasoning.

The aim of this work is to provide an inventory of the scientific corpus produced by the Spanish members of the Expedition to Peru and Chile (1777-1788). This material is divided into six large sections. The first section covers the different versions of the diary of the journey taken by the Expedition. The second section covers the drafts and workbooks used by the Expedition members for the writing of "Flora Peruviana et Chilensis," the manuscripts and published editions of this work, the materials used in the preparation of both the "Prodromus" and the "Systema Vegetabilium," the contributions of the assistants on the Expedition and some monographs of taxonomic interest. The third section is dedicated to quinological studies and other pharmacological works undertaken by Hipólito Ruiz López and José Pavón Jiménez. The fourth section includes the writings concerning Ruiz's dispute with Antonio José Cavanilles. The fifth section contains texts which ...

Desde el siglo XV hasta las primeras décadas del siglo XIX, los territorios hispánicos de ultramar fueron objeto de innumerables expediciones científicas en las que se escudriñó su flora, fauna y geografía. En nuestro caso, nos enfocaremos en la dimensión temporal de las representaciones científicas en las que se detuvo o condensó el tiempo de los procesos naturales. Esta operatoria, vista en una larga duración, alimentó debates internacionales en los siglos XVII y XVIII en los que imágenes realizadas desde el siglo XVI fueron retomadas y apropiadas. De esta manera, se actualizaron representaciones de historia natural, producidas como testimonio de la exploración temprana de América, así como de una empiria científica en el período ilustrado.

В статье анализируется деятельность научной экспедиции Г.М. Ловица и П.Б. Иноходцева 1769–1774 гг. Приводится обзор сохранившихся до настоящего времени материалов экспедиции, которые могут представлять интерес как источники по истории Нижнего Поволжья.

Since the 1980s, studying histories of exploration has become an increasingly prominent area of scholarship and has attracted critical attention from a range of different academic perspectives. Whether framed as a process of imperial expansion, as a quest for the production of new knowledge, or as a means for certain individuals to establish or advance their reputations, the complex motivations that lay behind European travellers' desire to venture overseas has been examined and critiqued by scholars situated in a number of different disciplines. Growing attention has been paid to those groups or individuals who have historically been written out of traditional, hagiographic exploration accounts, and we have seen the key roles played by women explorers, “indigenous intermediaries,” and various others exposed and investigated more thoroughly. The purpose of this paper is to review these diverse scholarly literatures, with a particular focus on those which centre their analysis on the long nineteenth century. In doing so, we demonstrate that the study of exploration is not just of narrow historical interest, but rather offers a means in which to shed new light on many wider social, political, and cultural processes that were taking place during this period.

We have analyzed the evolution of a block of materials (texts and drawings) from the Botanical Expedition to New Spain, acquired by Mariano La Gasca for the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid in January 1822. We have studied the origin of this documentary group, its arrival to the metropolis and the vicissitudes suffered before its incorporation into the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid. Lastly, we have inventoried the materials pertaining to the Elizondo legacy, acquired from a private individual, and we have indicated their current locations: the archives of the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid and the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, both in Madrid.

Wolfschmidt, Gudrun: Overview: Internationality in the Astronomical Research (18th to 21st Century).  Internationalität in der astronomischen Forschung.
In: Wolfschmidt, Gudrun (Hg.): Internationalität in der astronomischen Forschung (18. bis 21. Jahrhundert). Hamburg: tredition (Nuncius Hamburgensis; Bd. 49) 2020, S. 22-115.

RESUMO Após a queda de Napoleão, a França enfrentou simultâneos processos de reinvenção. O retorno de dirigentes Bourbon ao poder reformulou o Estado francês, de modo a conciliar anseios tradicionalistas e, ao mesmo tempo, exigências políticas corroboradas após a Revolução francesa. Em meio a tais processos de transformações simbólicas e institucionais, a Marinha francesa desempenhou um papel fulcral. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar os significados políticos de medidas defendidas pela Marinha durante a Restauração Bourbon. Dentre essas medidas, destaca-se a retomada da tradição de grandes viagens científicas, principalmente em função das diretrizes que forneceram para o colonialismo e comércio franceses e das formulações discursivas que promoveram acerca das regiões e povos por elas visitados.

ABSTRACT After the fall of Napoleon, French institutions faced reinvention processes. The return of Bourbon leaders to power changed several structures of French State, so that it would be possible to come to terms with both traditionalist aspirations and political demands supported since the French revolution. Among such symbolic and institutional changes, the French Navy had a significant role. Therefore, this article aims at analyzing political meanings of decisions made by the French Navy during the first phase of the French constitutional monarchy in the 19 th Century. It focuses particularly on French scientific expeditions commanded throughout the French Restoration, due to the colonial and commercial guidelines provided by them, as well as their discursive acts regarding visited regions and communities.

RESUMO: O artigo analisa viagens científicas empreendidas pela França ao longo do período monárquico constitucional, articulando-as ao debate historiográfico sobre a cultura colonial francesa, propondo uma periodização que identifique a existência de uma cultura colonial consolidada já na primeira metade do século XIX e não apenas a partir do Segundo Império. Nesse sentido, abordam-se algumas publicações decorrentes das grandes viagens de volta ao mundo como elementos inerentes à consolidação de tal cultura colonial, reiterando-se, assim, a possibilidade de abordagens historiográficas que coadunem interações entre ciência e política. Como exemplos de formulações discursivas inerentes a uma cultura colonial, destacam-se formulações sobre as possibilidades de classificação humana com base no ideal de civilização e formulações sobre as especificidades da tropicalidade no quadro global de produções da natureza. ABSTRACT: This article analyzes scientific expeditions organized by France during the first half of the nineteenth Century, suggesting the possibility to identify a well-established colonial culture in France throughout that period. Publications concerning those expeditions are analyzed as elements that were constitutive of such colonial culture. Therefore, the article supports a historic approach that conceives science and politics as intertwined elements. Scientific texts dedicated to classifying human groups, mainly through the idea of civilization, as well as tropicality descriptions are analyzed as main scientific elements which must have constituted frameworks of such colonial culture.