Writing the Voyage of Scientific Exploration: The Logbooks, Journals and Notes of the Baudin Expedition (1800--1804) (2010)
Sankey, Margaret (Author)
Intellectual History Review
Volume: 20
Pages: 401--413
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe”
Language: English
The 1800-4 scientific expedition that was commissioned by Bonaparte and captained by Nicolas Baudin was a vast note-producing machine. Recording information in the form of notes was indeed its mode of being. The expedition, conceived in the late eighteenth century, represents in its scope and achievements Enlightenment knowledge-gathering at its most ambitious: the exhaustive collection, measurement, description and classification of objects of the natural world. Aiming at encyclopaeligdic inclusiveness and at the same time seeking accurate knowledge, the achievements of the expedition were remarkable. Some 72,120 items (including drawings and writings) were brought back to France: raw material for future research, as well as quantities of notes, reports and narratives that in themselves constituted fragments of new knowledge about the natural world. Underpinning this plethora of note-taking was a particular understanding of what constituted science and the scientific enterprise at this time in post-Revolutionary France, and this understanding welded together both officers and naturalists in a common aim. The written traditions of sea-voyaging intersected with the reporting requirements of the emerging natural sciences, producing a unique social and intellectual interaction and cross-fertilisation, supported by the methods of recording.
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