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Bodies of Knowledge: anatomy, complexity and the invention of organizational systems, 1500-1850

Bodies of Knowledge: anatomy, complexity and the invention of organizational systems, 1500-1850

Publié le par Marielle Macé (Source : brian muñoz)

Bodies of Knowledge: anatomy, complexity and the invention of organizational systems, 1500-1850 

 

We are seeking proposals for a collection of essays that will explore the many ways in

which early modern understandings of the body created a new paradigm for the

theoretical/artificial organization of human knowledge in the sciences, philosophy, logic,

literature and the arts.

 

Abstracts should be 250 words in length, and must communicate a clear connection to

the central theme of this collection. To be considered for publication, proposals should

be sent to: anatomycfp@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting abstracts is February

1, 2010.

Call for Papers: “Bodies of Knowledge: Anatomy, Complexity and the Invention of

Organizational Systems, 1500-1850”

Beginning with the remarkable work of Andreas Vesalius (1543), anatomists

sought to create new narrative arrangements that mimicked the internal organization of the

body. In the years following the publication of Vesalius'

systematic arrangement of anatomical narratives provided an opportunity for examining a

variety of topics across many disciplines. As a result, many authors adopted the anatomy as

a means of describing/mapping the structural particulars of nearly every imaginable

De fabrica, it became clear that the

 

Matthew Landers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico,

Recinto de Mayagüez

 

Brian Muñoz, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico,

Recinto de Mayagüez

subject. In an attempt to assign meaningful connections to the seemingly discrete

phenomena of the ‘rational' cosmos, scientists, philosophers and artists looked to the

human body as an organizational reference, citing the internal structure of the human body

as a prime example of an integrated system. The body, they argued, was an enclosed space

(delineated by the flesh), making the investigation of its inner structure relatively

straightforward. What they discovered inside the human body, however, was a degree of

complexity previously unsuspected. In the attempt to arrange distinct parts/organs of the

body into groups according to their specialized, collaborative functions, anatomists

exposed the limitations of traditional modes of scientific narration. Faced with mounting

complexities, they tried to describe the human body as an order of simple and distinct parts

that could be arranged into increasingly compounded configurations (systems). Taken

together, these systems contributed to the integrity (interrelatedness) of the physical

whole.

To give an account of such complex, trans-spatial associations required the

development of new forms of scientific description: cross-referenced, digressive narratives

that could accommodate the non-linear arrangements of systematic embodiment.

Anatomists sought to explain the body's inner structure by dividing/dissecting it (both

abstractly and physically) into distinct parts and by creating ‘textual maps' of the

coherences of “Structure,” “Action,” and “Use” that they discovered between individual

components (

to arrange internal organs according to the ‘physical logic' of structural and functional

relation.

With the concurrent rise of anatomical and mathematical science in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, understandings of the divisibility of matter––theoretical and

actual––arrived at a kind of observational and experimental depth, conceived most often in

terms of mathematically divisible space. Quite naturally, the intellectual dissection and

mapping of human knowledge followed in the wake of these advancements. The resulting

shift toward systematic arrangements of information (

organizational schemes of such important characters as Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz,

Newton, and Bayle. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (particularly in

the works of Chambers, d'Alembert, Condorcet, Linnaeus, Erasmus Darwin, and

Lamarck, among others), the narrative logics of systematic organization dominated the

various approaches employed by philosophers and scientists to arrange the scattered

contents of the universe in a single, unified, branching system––thereby giving rise to the

construction of a

changing radically the way that we think about the universe and human understanding.

For the purposes of this collection, we seek essays that consider the influence of

anatomical science and/or early modern theories of the body on the ‘artificial' organization

of knowledge and the world (1500-1850). We are mindful of opening this discussion to

include emerging Atlantic considerations, including the application of systematic

organization to ‘New World' contexts. We are eager to entertain abstracts that explore the

manner in which colonization of the Americas, Africa, and the Caribbean was influenced

by emerging organizational systems (taxonomies of knowledge) in Europe. In addition to

the themes listed above, proposals should cover a broad range of topics, from an expansive

list of disciplines:

Mikrokosmografia 1615). In short, systematic organization resulted from effortsesprit de système) took shape in thebody of knowledge by functional (rather than syllogistic) relation,

Scientific Materialism between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The body as a central reference for the theoretical construction of

Body as an Organizational Metaphor

Encyclopedism and the Body of Knowledge

Bodily Systems, Systematic Classification and the Evolution of Species

Complexity, Logic and ‘Systematic' Arrangements of Knowledge

Body as a cartographic metaphor / Cartography as a metaphor of the body

Atlantic Circulation as a metaphor of Systematic Unity

The Classification of Bodies in the ‘New World'

The Influence of Taxonomies on Artistic Representation

Politics of the Body/Body Politics in the Enlightenment

Comparative Anatomies and the Categorization/Hierarchy of Knowledge

Keywords & Key Phrases:

System(s)

Systematic

Body/Bodies of Knowledge

Spatial Organization [of Knowledge]

Complexity

Physical Logic/Logic of Physicality

Aesthetics of System

Textual Mapping

Artistic Representations of the Body

Important Figures (include, but are not limited to):

Andreas Vesalius

Leon Battista Alberti

Albrecht Dürer

Piero della Francesca

Helkiah Crooke

Leonardo da Vinci

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Peter Ramus

René Descartes

Baruch Spinoza

Francis Bacon

Rembrandt van Rijn

Frans Hals

Thomas Hobbes

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Isaac Newton

Bernard de Mandeville

Pierre Bayle

Ephraim Chambers

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Jean-Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Denis Diderot

Carl Linneaus

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Erasmus Darwin

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Charles Darwin