The history of archaeology, and of Egyptology, has traditionally been written as a linear narrative of progress, with narrow-minded amateurs—the antiquaries—giving way to professional archaeologists. For some, Joseph Hekekyan's excavations (co-directed by Leonard Horner) at Memphis and Heliopolis in the 1850s have been seen as a turning point, when the geological principle of stratigraphy was applied to archaeology, thus giving rise to methodical scientific excavation. This article challenges the existing narrative by showing how critiques of Hekekyan's excavation and Horner's interpretation, by the antiquary and historian Samuel Sharpe, inspired the eminent geologist Charles Lyell to seek the opinion of John Gardner Wilkinson, another leading antiquarian Egyptologist, as to the validity of the excavations. Wilkinson's specialist knowledge of Egypt enabled him to identity the problematic assumptions that underpinned the excavation programme, which other leading scholars had missed. Though Lyell was unsuccessful in obtaining the support he desired, he became aware of the more complex situation on the ground in Egypt. Instead of ushering in an age of scientific Egyptology, the Horner–Hekekyan programme highlights how new methodological techniques were contested by contemporaries, and did not immediately or necessarily translate into improved knowledge: a much-neglected dimension in fieldwork-centred disciplinary histories.
{"title":"A geologist and an Egyptologist in conversation: Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Gardner Wilkinson","authors":"Robert . Frost","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0032","url":null,"abstract":"The history of archaeology, and of Egyptology, has traditionally been written as a linear narrative of progress, with narrow-minded amateurs—the antiquaries—giving way to professional archaeologists. For some, Joseph Hekekyan's excavations (co-directed by Leonard Horner) at Memphis and Heliopolis in the 1850s have been seen as a turning point, when the geological principle of stratigraphy was applied to archaeology, thus giving rise to methodical scientific excavation. This article challenges the existing narrative by showing how critiques of Hekekyan's excavation and Horner's interpretation, by the antiquary and historian Samuel Sharpe, inspired the eminent geologist Charles Lyell to seek the opinion of John Gardner Wilkinson, another leading antiquarian Egyptologist, as to the validity of the excavations. Wilkinson's specialist knowledge of Egypt enabled him to identity the problematic assumptions that underpinned the excavation programme, which other leading scholars had missed. Though Lyell was unsuccessful in obtaining the support he desired, he became aware of the more complex situation on the ground in Egypt. Instead of ushering in an age of scientific Egyptology, the Horner–Hekekyan programme highlights how new methodological techniques were contested by contemporaries, and did not immediately or necessarily translate into improved knowledge: a much-neglected dimension in fieldwork-centred disciplinary histories.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76888442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Breadfruit is a tropical fruit-bearing tree native to Oceania and a staple food in the diets of many Pacific Islander communities. During the so-called Age of Discovery, several European voyages returned from the Pacific with descriptions of the region's flora, including breadfruit. Since that time, scientists have sometimes struggled to agree upon an adequate acknowledgement of those early descriptions in modern botany and taxonomy. This paper considers one such struggle: the centuries-long disagreement among botanists regarding the value of the botanical descriptions and illustrations of breadfruit, as well as the proposed scientific name for the species attributed to Sydney Parkinson, a young artist who sailed with Cook aboard HMS Endeavour during the late eighteenth century. While Parkinson's descriptions were thorough, it is suggested here that his contributions were neglected by later scientists, due mainly to his status as an artist and to an approach that today we would call interdisciplinary. This outcome can be viewed as indicative of the tension between the arts and the sciences that remains to this day and, I suggest, continues to hamper our understanding of the natural world.
{"title":"‘The correct name for the breadfruit’: on interdisciplinarity and the artist Sydney Parkinson's contested contributions to the botanical sciences","authors":"R. Fielding","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Breadfruit is a tropical fruit-bearing tree native to Oceania and a staple food in the diets of many Pacific Islander communities. During the so-called Age of Discovery, several European voyages returned from the Pacific with descriptions of the region's flora, including breadfruit. Since that time, scientists have sometimes struggled to agree upon an adequate acknowledgement of those early descriptions in modern botany and taxonomy. This paper considers one such struggle: the centuries-long disagreement among botanists regarding the value of the botanical descriptions and illustrations of breadfruit, as well as the proposed scientific name for the species attributed to Sydney Parkinson, a young artist who sailed with Cook aboard HMS Endeavour during the late eighteenth century. While Parkinson's descriptions were thorough, it is suggested here that his contributions were neglected by later scientists, due mainly to his status as an artist and to an approach that today we would call interdisciplinary. This outcome can be viewed as indicative of the tension between the arts and the sciences that remains to this day and, I suggest, continues to hamper our understanding of the natural world.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82170583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frontispiece for December 2022","authors":"","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"78 1","pages":"NP - NP"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72910599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The literature on seventeenth-century Royal Society member Nehemiah Grew's artistic production has been sparse and tentative. Although his publication record includes five illustrated books, some of which feature quite elaborate illustrative programmes, it has been challenging to credit any of this visual production directly to the books’ author. In this article, I aim to both contribute to the growing interest in Grew's illustrations, and to provide a corrective to this gap in the literature, presenting Grew for the first time as an active illustrator and arguing for the importance of Grew's visual production during his career with the Royal Society. I will discuss his visual archive and his relationship with his engravers and will also present evidence of his regular use of illustrated figures in lectures he presented throughout the 1670s. This includes attributing two original drawings to Grew that are still present in the Royal Society's collections—two dissected cat's kidneys—that are associated with a lecture he gave on animal anatomy in 1679.
{"title":"Nehemiah Grew, the illustrator","authors":"Pamela Mackenzie","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on seventeenth-century Royal Society member Nehemiah Grew's artistic production has been sparse and tentative. Although his publication record includes five illustrated books, some of which feature quite elaborate illustrative programmes, it has been challenging to credit any of this visual production directly to the books’ author. In this article, I aim to both contribute to the growing interest in Grew's illustrations, and to provide a corrective to this gap in the literature, presenting Grew for the first time as an active illustrator and arguing for the importance of Grew's visual production during his career with the Royal Society. I will discuss his visual archive and his relationship with his engravers and will also present evidence of his regular use of illustrated figures in lectures he presented throughout the 1670s. This includes attributing two original drawings to Grew that are still present in the Royal Society's collections—two dissected cat's kidneys—that are associated with a lecture he gave on animal anatomy in 1679.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91095094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supposed to know","authors":"Jenny Edkins","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2021.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81589219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1924 Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Library at McGill University in Montreal, acquired a large portfolio of paintings of Indian birds from an antiquarian dealer in London, England. In addition to 121 watercolours of birds, the portfolio contained a dozen botanical sketches and 31 watercolours of Indian fish. After further research, Wood concluded that the birds had been painted by Lady Elizabeth Gwillim (1763–1807), the wife of a Supreme Court justice in Madras (now Chennai), during the brief period from her arrival in 1801 until her death six years later. The bird paintings that so impressed Wood were created through the intersection of three different stories: the first, the work of a particularly focused Englishwoman who arrived in Madras prepared to paint its natural productions, especially its birds; the second, the story of the Indian bird catchers and the long history of fowling in India; and the third, the story of the birds themselves, their migrations, forced and otherwise, and their entrapments, which brought them into relationship with the bird catchers and the painter.
{"title":"Lady Gwillim and the birds of Madras","authors":"Victoria Dickenson","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"In 1924 Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Library at McGill University in Montreal, acquired a large portfolio of paintings of Indian birds from an antiquarian dealer in London, England. In addition to 121 watercolours of birds, the portfolio contained a dozen botanical sketches and 31 watercolours of Indian fish. After further research, Wood concluded that the birds had been painted by Lady Elizabeth Gwillim (1763–1807), the wife of a Supreme Court justice in Madras (now Chennai), during the brief period from her arrival in 1801 until her death six years later. The bird paintings that so impressed Wood were created through the intersection of three different stories: the first, the work of a particularly focused Englishwoman who arrived in Madras prepared to paint its natural productions, especially its birds; the second, the story of the Indian bird catchers and the long history of fowling in India; and the third, the story of the birds themselves, their migrations, forced and otherwise, and their entrapments, which brought them into relationship with the bird catchers and the painter.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79504049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) regarded natural selection as a force of conformity. Competition between species kept them from dysmorphic chaos. Catastrophes exterminated many species that would otherwise compete. The absence of this competitive natural selection allowed the remnants to ramify (their lineages to split). Matthew thus united elements of catastrophism and transformism in a way opposite to Lyell combining uniformitarianism with species fixity. Matthew's mechanism of lineage splitting differed from Darwin's or Wallace's. Wallace's lineages split in the presence of competing species. Darwin saw competition within species as the disruptive force splitting lineages. How, then, did the majority come to regard Matthew's and Darwin's mechanism as equal, a view shared by the mainstream and the fringe? The roots of this misconception lie in publications by Thomas Huxley, Patrick Matthew and Charles Darwin, each of whom had fragmentary knowledge of the others' ideas. Later writers elaborated the divergent presentism rolling from split narratives.
{"title":"Patrick Matthew's synthesis of catastrophism and transformism","authors":"J. Dagg, J. Derry","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) regarded natural selection as a force of conformity. Competition between species kept them from dysmorphic chaos. Catastrophes exterminated many species that would otherwise compete. The absence of this competitive natural selection allowed the remnants to ramify (their lineages to split). Matthew thus united elements of catastrophism and transformism in a way opposite to Lyell combining uniformitarianism with species fixity. Matthew's mechanism of lineage splitting differed from Darwin's or Wallace's. Wallace's lineages split in the presence of competing species. Darwin saw competition within species as the disruptive force splitting lineages. How, then, did the majority come to regard Matthew's and Darwin's mechanism as equal, a view shared by the mainstream and the fringe? The roots of this misconception lie in publications by Thomas Huxley, Patrick Matthew and Charles Darwin, each of whom had fragmentary knowledge of the others' ideas. Later writers elaborated the divergent presentism rolling from split narratives.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85271022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reading the Mind in the Eyes is a psychometric test first published by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 1997 and revised in 2001. It was designed to measure subjects' ‘mentalizing’ ability, or their capacity to attribute cognitive and emotional states to others. Although originally developed and used for autistic adults, this instrument has proven remarkably durable in the succeeding two decades. This is notable for several reasons. The instrument itself is a historical artefact composed of cropped photographs from 1990s-era commercial magazines. Researchers have also noted that it may measure emotional vocabulary better than emotion recognition. In the decades following its publication, the theory underpinning the test, that autistics lack components of the ability to empathize, has been critiqued both by autism researchers and by autistics themselves. Despite these potential shortcomings, researchers in numerous fields have used it to assess a broad range of diagnostically defined groups, including those with substance use disorders, eating disorders and personality and neurodevelopmental disorders. Indeed, it is cited far more frequently now than it was in the decade following its publication. This essay considers how this instrument defines autism as a particular type of disability, and how the capacities purportedly associated with the ability to read minds through eyes are then used to characterize a range of human differences.
{"title":"How to read ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’","authors":"C. Silverman","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2021.0058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0058","url":null,"abstract":"Reading the Mind in the Eyes is a psychometric test first published by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 1997 and revised in 2001. It was designed to measure subjects' ‘mentalizing’ ability, or their capacity to attribute cognitive and emotional states to others. Although originally developed and used for autistic adults, this instrument has proven remarkably durable in the succeeding two decades. This is notable for several reasons. The instrument itself is a historical artefact composed of cropped photographs from 1990s-era commercial magazines. Researchers have also noted that it may measure emotional vocabulary better than emotion recognition. In the decades following its publication, the theory underpinning the test, that autistics lack components of the ability to empathize, has been critiqued both by autism researchers and by autistics themselves. Despite these potential shortcomings, researchers in numerous fields have used it to assess a broad range of diagnostically defined groups, including those with substance use disorders, eating disorders and personality and neurodevelopmental disorders. Indeed, it is cited far more frequently now than it was in the decade following its publication. This essay considers how this instrument defines autism as a particular type of disability, and how the capacities purportedly associated with the ability to read minds through eyes are then used to characterize a range of human differences.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73486380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the biographies of two gentlewomen, María de Betancourt (1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (1779–1855), who lived respectively in Tenerife and Menorca, two crucial nodes in the scientific, commercial and military global networks of the late eighteenth century. Some of their scientific and literary contributions are mapped, paying particular attention to how they became active in contemporaneous learned networks. It is argued that the peculiar, intellectually rich microcosms of the islands shaped these women's lives in ways that enabled them to enter learned circles, either real or imaginary, and from a very modest site to contribute to the global circulation of ideas, goods and peoples.
本文探讨了两位贵妇的传记，María de Betancourt(1758-1824)和Joana de Vigo(1779-1855)，她们分别生活在特内里费岛和梅诺卡岛，这是18世纪后期科学、商业和军事全球网络的两个关键节点。他们的一些科学和文学贡献被绘制出来，特别注意他们如何在当代学习网络中变得活跃。有人认为，这些岛屿独特的、智力丰富的微观世界塑造了这些妇女的生活，使她们能够进入现实或想象的学术圈子，并从一个非常不起眼的地方为思想、商品和人民的全球流通做出贡献。
{"title":"Maritime Crossroads: the Knowledge Pursuits of María de Betancourt (Tenerife, 1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (Menorca, 1779–1855)","authors":"Mónica Bolufer, Elena Serrano","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2021.0071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0071","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the biographies of two gentlewomen, María de Betancourt (1758–1824) and Joana de Vigo (1779–1855), who lived respectively in Tenerife and Menorca, two crucial nodes in the scientific, commercial and military global networks of the late eighteenth century. Some of their scientific and literary contributions are mapped, paying particular attention to how they became active in contemporaneous learned networks. It is argued that the peculiar, intellectually rich microcosms of the islands shaped these women's lives in ways that enabled them to enter learned circles, either real or imaginary, and from a very modest site to contribute to the global circulation of ideas, goods and peoples.","PeriodicalId":82881,"journal":{"name":"Tanzania notes and records","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89132779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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