The Scientific Revolutions of the 16th and 17th Centuries

seminar: The Animal as Artifact: the Histoire des animaux Project

speaker: Anita Guerrini (University of California, Santa Barbara)

abstract: The natural history of animals was one of the collaborative projects proposed by the Paris Academy of sciences at its first meeting in 1666. Aspects of this work were published in the 1670s as the Memoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux. This paper will look particularly at the illustrations to this work to discuss the purposes of the project; while the project was self-consciously "modern," the illustrations show the yet unstable boundaries between factual and mythical, real and factitious, life and death, and also animal and human: we do not see the humans who did the dissecting, or the human bodies that were also dissected as part of this project.

timetable:
Sat 5 Nov, 15:00 - 16:00, Sala Conferenze Centro De Giorgi
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