Tamara Caulkins
Central Washington University

DATE: July 16, 2019
TIME: 4:30pm
VENUE: Room 4.04, 4/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Abstract:

An increasingly quantitative approach to science developed over the course of the long eighteenth century. Comparing the descriptions of New World flora and fauna in the art and science of entomologist-botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) and explorer-philosopher Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) exemplifies many of the changes in views and attitudes toward the natural environment that took place during the eighteenth century. Merian and Humboldt traveled to South America in 1699 and 1799 respectively. Merian’s vivid illustrations of flora and fauna in Surinam graced the libraries of naturalists throughout the world; Humboldt’s passion for measurement informed his mapping of plants on Mount Chimborazo in what is now Ecuador. What can we learn from these contrasting modes of inquiry? In this talk, Dr. Caulkins will invite increased attention to the graphic interfaces of science and art as exemplified in the work and publications of these two figures.

Biographical sketch

Dr. Tamara Caulkins teaches in the Douglas Honors College at Central Washington University. She researches the intersections of science and culture through an examination of graphic images in science and culture. She has written on developments in eighteenth-century France through an analysis of bourgeoisie values in Buffon’s encyclopedic Histoire Naturelle (Natural History). Dr. Caulkins has also studied the role of science in the development of notation systems for court dance and military drill. Her current book project, The Science of Becoming Noble: Rationalizing Aristocracy through Diagrammatic Notations for Dance and Drill in the Enlightenment, examines the implications of graphic visualizations in the sciences for new ways of measuring and understanding the movement of human bodies.