In the framework of the above-stated objectives, I developed three case studies, each of which addressed the role of scientific images and visualization practices for knowledge-production and knowledge-dissemination.
In the paper “Changing Audiences, Changing Meanings: Haeckel’s Copepods and Biology’s Popular Culture,” I explore the ways German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) used the scientific illustrations he presented in the Art Forms of Nature to tear down lay-expert boundaries (fig. 1). This case study serves as a paradigm within the project’s research plan. I have used questions, topics, and themes raised by Case Study 1 to develop two different cases in the framework of the project’s overall objectives.
The peculiarities of marine invertebrates (with respect to habitat, anatomy, and physiology), in some cases also referred to as “insects of the ocean,” is one reoccurring theme that I follow in my second case study. The starting point for Case Study 2 is the observation that in the nineteenth century’s second half, marine biologists expressed something like envy of ornithologists for possessing more refined norms in classifying species. For example, the problem of describing a bird’s colour accurately was solved by establishing a standardized nomenclature of colours that systematically named and numbered thousands of colour-shades (fig. 2). My paper discussing “The Rosy View of Ornithological Classification from Marine Biology in the late 19th century” investigates why and how nineteenth century marine biologists used ornithology in arguing for norm-standardization in their sub-discipline.
The luminescent of marine species, a reoccurring theme raised in these two cases, provides the starting point for the last case exploring the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge through visualization practices across different audiences and among various actors. In the late nineteenth century, marine bioluminescence occupied a niche dynamically intersecting with many disciplines and subdisciplines in the physical and the life sciences on the one hand, while constituting a field of popular perception and public reception on the other hand. Case Study 3 “Luminous Marine Animals and an Enlightened Public: How Bioluminescence Popularized Marine Biology” investigates this niche through the lens of visual culture (fig.3).
The research for these cases is based on primary and secondary sources and involved iconographic and comparative analysis. Examining monographs, journal and newspaper articles, illustrated magazines, encyclopedia, and objects, I traced the transformation of images and iconographies across material entities and time and space. I presented this research at various venues, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Johns Hopkins University, History of Science Switzerland, International Congress of History of Science and Technology, and the CHSTM-working group Ocean Sciences, Technology, and Medicine. Since January 2021, I am the creator and co-organizer of the CHSTM-working group Visual Cultures in Natural History, the Life Science, and Medicine. Further, in October 2021, I organized the international workshop “The Circulation of Images in the Life Sciences” in collaboration with the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
