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Mobile objects: the space of shells in eighteenth-century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2006

BETTINA DIETZ
Affiliation:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Germany. Email: [email protected].

Abstract

The frequent distinction made between scientific and purely amateur collections misrepresents the specificity of the field of eighteenth-century natural history. This paper argues that the extent and the boundaries of a scientific field can be determined only within the framework of concrete historical constellations of institutions, protagonists, practices and objects. By tracing the circulation of shells in eighteenth-century France, Paris in particular, between about 1735 and 1780, it becomes evident which individuals or groups actually came into contact with these shells; in what practices of collecting, describing and classification they were involved; and in what spaces they were displayed. Thus the contours of a constellation emerge which differ considerably from those drawn hitherto.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2006 British Society for the History of Science

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Footnotes

Research for this essay was made possible by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the context of the research group ‘Kulturelle Inszenierungen von Fremdheit’ at the University of Munich.