The knowledgeable traveler

or Chuck and Bob’s most excellent adventure

HUM 201Fall 2005

Lecture 10

Points of departure

• Middle World as the space of new relationships and possibilities

• Radical empiricism helps us understand how changes in these relationships can lead to new knowledge of our environment

• Two important places in the production of knowledge of the world: field and laboratory

Charles Darwin

• 1809-1882• One of five children• Father-in-law (also

uncle) the Wedgwood of Wedgwood Pottery fame

• Landed Gentry• Publishes Origin of

Species 1859

Scientific Places 1

• The field (Middle World)• The space of the tour• Collecting specimens

– Note taking

• Observing habitats at the site– Involves talking to locals

• HMS Beagle (1841 watercolor by Owen Stanley)• 1831-1836

The mission

• To continue charting work in South America

• Chronometric readings around the globe (longitude)

• Captain Fitzroy also had four native Fuegians he educated in Europe

Darwin on the Beagle

• Darwin engaged as a naturalist– Engage in exploration and documentation of specimens– Serve as a companion for Captain Fitzroy– Actually the third person asked

• Ten months after his return Darwin begins his first notebook on the transmutation of the species– Not wholly convinced of transmutation on voyage

• Actually eats important specimens• For finches has to borrow others labeled specimens

• Much of knowledge in this space is description

• 12 shirts1 carpet bag1 pair slippers1 pair of light walking shoes1 microscope (a single lens model by Bancks & Son, London)1 geological compass1 plain compass2 pistols (with spare parts)1 rifle (with spare parts)1 telescope1 pencil case1 geological hammer5 simisometers3 mountain barometers1 clinometer1 camera obscura1 hygrometer (belonged to FitzRoy)1 taxidermy book2-3 Spanish language books14 other books, including Humboldt's "Personal Narrative" and Lyell's "Principles of Geology Vol. 1"1 coin purse (Fanny Owen's gift)1 pin with a lock of Sarah Owen's hair (Fanny's sister)

The Voyage

One of those journeys that start and end at the same place with a Middle World

• "These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gestures violent and without dignity. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world." -- Charles Darwin

• A watercolor of a native from the Tierra del Fuego, from around the time that Charles Darwin was on his Voyage of the Beagle (1830s).

Knowledge as description

• Observation comes from the fabric of experience– Strong bodily presence– Mixes scientific and social, natural

and civil– Empire, race, other, scientific

knowledge always interrelated

Falklands• Zoophytes-plantlike animal such as

coral or sea sponge

Scientific Places 2

• The museum– Specimens sorted– Compared to to other specimens– Knowledge is created by organizing

observations in the field• Creating the map from the tour

– Stories created by using spatial practices to navigate between these two places

Knowledge as possession

Knowledge through artifacts

• National Museum

• Darwin needs to hear that certain samples not found on mainland

Radical Empiricism

• Knowledge is of elements in relation.• Create new knowledge by changing

the relationship of the elements to the self or to each other.

• In the museum one can easily compare samples from different locations (transform the tour into the map)

Creation stories

• Utilizing the spatial practices of the field and the museum Darwin transforms a travel story into a creation story

• Tension between the nomad and exile (in the field) and home (museum).

• Are there different types of knowledge for these different states of being?