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Picturing Nature: Gender and the Politics of Natural‐Historical Description in Eighteenth‐Century G dańsk/ D anzig
Author(s) -
COOPER ALIX
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12080
Subject(s) - politics , scrutiny , daughter , natural (archaeology) , history , history of science , classics , literature , genealogy , sociology , art , philosophy , law , epistemology , political science , archaeology
The concept of ‘description’ has increasingly come under scrutiny in the history of science. This paper explores eighteenth‐century debates over description through the case study of a scientific family in G dańsk (the former D anzig). There, on the shores of the B altic, physician J ohann P hilipp B reyne took L atin notes on naturalia, while several of his daughters drew and painted vivid representations of them ‘from life’ and one daughter wrote ‘poetical descriptions’ of them. In the B reyne family's work, different forms of description of the natural world were juxtaposed to reveal what might be termed a gendered politics of description.