Call for Applications


Gathering Things, Collecting Data, Producing Knowledge
The Use of Collections in Biological and Medical Knowledge Production from Early
Modern Natural History to Genome Databases

Ischia Summer School on the History of Life Sciences
Ischia, 28 June - 5 July, 2005

Supported by:
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (Naples)
Institut d'Histoire de la Médecine et de la Santé (Geneva)
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin)
Wellcome Trust Center, UCL (London)
VolkswagenStiftung Hannover

Directors of the School: Janet Browne (London)
Bernardino Fantini (Geneva-Naples)
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin)



1. Brief Introduction to the Theme

Knowledge on life and disease has always been connected to the mastery of
variety and variability. Living beings and diseases come in a bewildering
multiplicity of forms. Accordingly, the collection of material objects and of
data has played and still plays a major role in the processes of knowledge
acquisition that characterize biomedical sciences. Collections in the life
sciences have a long and diverse history. In the renaissance, ‘cabinets of
curiosity’ prevailed. Alongside, botanical and anatomical collections arose,
connected to the medical professions and long distance trade. They grew into the
great museums of the nineteenth century that became institutional centers for
the life sciences. Increased use of measurement and systematic data production,
finally, brought into being the large data bases that are used today to address
questions of biodiversity, genomics, and public health.

The Ischia Summer School “Gathering Things, Collecting Data, Producing
Knowledge” will address the following topics:

- natural history collections (cabinets of curiosity, Renaissance and early
modern natural history collections; botanical gardens and herbals;)

- specialized collections (anatomical and embryological collections; taxonomic
collections;)

- scientific travel collections (natural history museums; from colonial to
scientific expeditions;)

- epidemiological and populational data collections (national registers of
parasites; blood banks; medical reference centers; repositories of classical
genetics; mutant collections;) 

- data bases and resource centers in modern biomedicine (protein and DNA data
banks; genomic data; Human Genome Project;)

- national surveys and biodiversity inventories (reference collections in trade
and industry; patent collections; national surveys of natural resources;
bio-geographical data bases;)

2. Practical Information

The course is intended for scholars, especially graduate and postdoctoral
students, from a wide variety of backgrounds and levels who share an interest in
the use of collections in biological and medical knowledge production from early
modern natural history to genome database.

The emphasis of the course will be on encouraging discussion and exchanging
ideas across disciplinary boundaries. English is the official working language.
 
Applications should be sent by the 28th of February 2005 to: Institut d’Histoire
de la Médecine et de la Santé, CMU,
Case postale, 1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.
Phone: +41.22.379.57.90; Fax: +41.22.379.57.92
E-mail: Bernardino.Fantini@medecine.unige.ch

Please include a brief CV, a statement specifying your academic experience and
interest in the course topic, and a letter of recommendation. The group will be
limited to about 25 participants. A tuition fee of US$ 600 is required. The fee
covers full board and lodging in Ischia.

Prospectus


Gathering Things, Collecting Data, Producing Knowledge
The Use of Collections in Biological and Medical Knowledge Production from Early
Modern Natural History to Genome Databases

Ischia Summer School on the History of Life Sciences
Ischia, 28 June - 5 July, 2005

Supported by:
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (Naples)
Institut d'Histoire de la Médecine et de la Santé (Geneva)
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin)
Wellcome Trust Center, UCL (London)
VolkswagenStiftung Hannnover

Directors of the School: Janet Browne (London)
Bernardino Fantini (Geneva-Naples)
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin)




1. Introduction to the Theme

Knowledge on life and disease has always been connected to the mastery of
variety and variability. Living beings and diseases come in a bewildering
multiplicity of forms. Accordingly, the collection of material objects and of
data has played and still plays a major role in the processes of knowledge
acquisition that characterize biomedical sciences. Arguably, the production of
biological and medical knowledge is not only accompanied, but instantiated by
and depends on, different forms of collections. Collections create spaces in
which dispersed things are brought into close vicinity, thus allowing for
operations of comparison, permutation, and calculation.

Collections in the life sciences have a long and diverse history. In the
renaissance, ‘cabinets of curiosity’ prevailed, displaying the wonders of nature
and the reach of power of their, mostly noble, proprietors. Alongside this
however, botanical and anatomical collections arose connected to the medical
professions and long distance trade, which partly grew into the great museums of
the nineteenth century that became the institutional centers for the life
sciences. Increased use of measurement and systematic data production, finally,
brought into being the large databases that are used today to address questions
of biodiversity, genomics, and public health.

The Ischia Summer School “Gathering Things, Collecting Data, Producing
Knowledge” will address this complex history of collection in the life sciences
on four different levels. 

The first level concerns an epistemology of “worlds in boxes” (to use an
expression of art historian Anke te Heesen). The activity of collecting is
always accompanied by the creation of forms of miniaturization, compression, and
mobilization. In turn, this allows patterns and classifications to emerge that
would not emerge if things would remain in their natural dispersion. In
particular, it is the de- or rather re-contextualization of exemplars and data
in collections that has the most far-reaching epistemological effects, as it
provides the practical substrate both for abstractions of objects from their
‘natural’ contexts in theory formation, and for the discovery of new, often
unintended and surprising relationships among objects. The availability of
collections thus shapes the formation of conceptual and theoretical innovations
in respective scientific disciplines. Collections become the foundation for
further scientific work that would otherwise not have been possible at all, as
well as for social, economical, and political interventions, such as in the form
of eugenic records or the species surveys.

The second level concerns the social, institutional, and cultural forms of
collecting and collections. These forms have experienced very diverse historical
expressions - from natural cabinets to museums, to contemporary resource centers
- that will be analyzed in an exemplary fashion. Most importantly, collections
always imply the drawing of boundaries on the architectural, practical, and
professional level. What is the rule in the outside world may turn into a strict
taboo inside a collection – most patently exemplified in the frequent function
of collections to preserve what would otherwise be consumed.

Third, there is the issue of creating networks and forms of collaboration, such
as the creation of networks of specimen and sample exchange or the organization
of expeditions. They are associated with and provoked by the more or less
systematic efforts of collecting things and data. Systems of exchange and
communication emerge which show a strong tendency towards standardization of
information and normalization of behavior through technical languages, manuals,
and codes. Not rarely, such systems develop a strong internal dynamics in social
as well as epistemological respects.

Finally, gathering things and collecting data can be compared to, and also
result in, forms of mapping that are at the same time forms of domination:
mapping territories, classifying nature, probing and describing populations. At
the same time, these forms of mapping delineate disciplinary fields within
science itself. As experiments, collections are constitutive of the power of
science to represent and intervene. Issues of expertise and information rights,
as well as intellectual ownership and patenting rights that arise from this
connection will be explored during the workshop.


2. Program

These systematic questions - concerning matters of epistemology, culture, social
practices, and policy - shall be pursued by choosing a limited number of
historically confined forms of gathering things and collecting data. The cases
are so chosen that the whole historical range from the Renaissance to the age of
genomics will be covered, and that they exhibit interesting and complementary
aspects for a discussion of the above mentioned systematic questions. According
to the present stage of planning, seven cases will be considered in detail, and
one day of lecturing, work, and discussion will be devoted to each:

- natural history collections
cabinets of curiosity, Renaissance and early modern natural history collections;
botanical gardens and herbals; university gardens; pharmaceutical gardens;
private botanical gardens; early orangeries; early herbaria

- specialized collections
anatomical collections; embryological collections; taxonomic collections;
teratological collections (18th and 19th centuries); wax models; glass models

- scientific travel collections
natural history museums as deposits for travel collections; from colonial to
scientific expeditions

- epidemiological and populational data collections
national registers of parasites; blood banks; medical reference centers;
repositories of classical genetics; mutant collections; wild form collections;
seed and grain collections

- databases and resource centers in modern biomedicine
protein and DNA databanks of various sorts; genomic data; plasmid, cosmid, and
artificial chromosome resource centers; Human Genome Project

- national surveys and biodiversity inventories
reference collections in trade and industry; patent collections; national
surveys of natural resources; biogeographical databases; all-species-project;
nomenclature databases (Kew index); ethno botany and –zoology

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