The chapter focuses on specimens as a means of creating knowledge in natural history in early nineteenth-century and overseas expeditions as a form of experiment in the course of which these specimens are created. Instructions, scientific interests, collecting practices, preservation and travelling itself influence the qualities of specimens and consequently further physiological investigation and classification. Therefore specimens in museums and laboratories may not be conceived as timeless evidence of nature, but as culturally made objects with a history of their own. Inspired by Rheinberger’s concept of “epistemic things”, Schmutzer follows the story of specimens of South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa) and explores the emergence of these “things” in a long-term process of re-examining knowledge which neither starts nor ends with the duration of an expedition.
...MoreBook Marianne Klemun; Ulrike Spring (2016) Expeditions as Experiments: Practising Observation and Documentation.
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