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Article ID: CBB001252692

The Aesthetics of Laboratory Inscription: Claude Bernard's Cahier Rouge (2013)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 104, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 63-85
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

DOI: 10.1086/669883

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This essay explores the aesthetic sensibilities of the French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813--1878). In particular, it analyzes the Cahier Rouge (1850--1860), Bernard's acclaimed laboratory notebook. In this notebook, Bernard articulates the range of his experience as an experimental physiologist, juxtaposing without differentiation details of laboratory procedure and more personal queries, doubts, and reflections on experimentation, life, and art. Bernard's insights, it is argued, offer an aesthetic and phenomenological template for considering experimentation. His physiological point of view ranges from his own bodily aesthesis or sensory perception, through personal reflections on scientific discovery as an artistic process, to a broader metaphysical conception of life as an artistic creation. Such an aesthetic approach to physiology enables Bernard to reconcile his empirical methodology and his romantic idealism; it offers the history of laboratory science a framework for considering the individual, bodily, and emotional labor inherent in physiological experimentation.

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