Reorganizing Nature? Making Knowledge and Environments in Applied Natural History around 1800

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Historical actors like Johann Beckmann (1737–1811) embody the ideal of the polymath, who investigated, classified and described the “realm of nature”. At the same time, they established a new form of applied, scholarly knowledge in key sectors of 18th century economy: forestry, agriculture, farming, mining, hydraulic engineering, trades, and crafts. For the latter sector Beckmann introduced the term “Technologie” (technology) referring to a “systematic ordering” of knowledge about crafts and their processing of natural resources. Beckmann’s scholarly activities – analyzed within the intellectual environment of the reformist university at Göttingen, as part of European scholarly networks, and global (imperial) entanglements – are characteristic for the field of applied natural history. Consequently, they constitute a very suitable object of study and comparison concerning scholarly/ scientific knowledge about human-nature-relations. The project aims at significantly enhancing our understanding of how applied scholarly knowledge about human-nature-relations evolved and contributed to fundamental shifts of these relations at beginning of the modern period in Central Europe. To this end, it will examine actors, practices, spaces and scholarly networks of applied natural history, in order to identify the characteristic and innovative “knowledge production” and the “environing technologies” it developed. The project is designed to be studied at several interconnected spatial levels. Thus, the Göttingen case of applied natural history is conceptualized as a co-production of local, regional, and global processes. Transfer and acclimatization attempts of crops, forest tree species, or garden plants will be just as central to the project as the circulation of knowledge, theory, and practice of handling “local” and “foreign nature”. The “Göttingen case” will be contrasted with comparable centers of applied natural history in Central Europe. The project will address aspects of political history by asking how applied natural history was implicated in state and empire building. Beckmann’s collection of models of mining and hydraulic technology, his extensive map collection and correspondence as well as the substantial collection of his publications and edited periodicals make Göttingen a very suitable starting point for this project. The study will be facilitated by the department of collection management at Göttingen University as a partner within the project. The municipal, university, and Lower Saxon state archives will allow for a detailed reconstruction of Beckmann’s economic garden (including his teaching collecting of agricultural and gardening tools) and other “apparatuses of knowledge”, as well as the political implications of applied natural history.