Article ID: CBB706126944

Series of Forms, Visual Techniques, and Quantitative Devices: Ordering the World Between the End of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (2019)

unapi

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology.

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Authors & Contributors
Mainz, Vera V.
Podgorny, Irina
Giunta, Carmen J.
Girolami, Gregory S.
Warner, Charles H. (Chuck)
Lowther, David
Concepts
Zoology
Paleontology
Classification
Visual representation; visual communication
Fossils
Naturalists
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
17th century
Places
Argentina
Germany
Nepal
Kansas (U.S.)
Himalayan Mountains (Nepal)
Prussia (Germany)
Institutions
Berlin Zoological Museum
Anatomical-zootomical Museum in Berlin
Københavns Universitet (Copenhagen)
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Acclimatisation Society of Victoria
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