Anecdotal Evidence: Science and Storytelling in the Global Eighteenth Century

轶事证据：全球十八世纪的科学与讲故事

• 批准号: AH/V01000X/2
• 负责人: Emily Senior
• 金额: $ 16.76万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV01000X%2F2
• 关键词: Anecdotal; Evidence; Science; Storytelling; Global

What is anecdotal evidence, how does it relate to the dramatic changes in global interconnectedness over the course of the long eighteenth century, and what kinds of scientific stories does it tell? The anecdote rose to prominence as a literary form in the era of Enlightenment conversation culture in Britain. While seventeenth-century usage suggests anecdotes conveyed secret or unpublished knowledge, the eighteenth century brought an emphasis on anecdotes about striking events, before a culture of collection and literary ephemera filled nineteenth-century compilations of literary and historical anecdotes. In scientific communication, anecdotes offer informal evidence that differs from other experimental and observational narratives. This project shows how global circuits of British travel, trade and empire contributed to a new emphasis on anecdotal exchange in a period when informal evidence relating to medicine and natural philosophy was rapidly increasing in transnational circulation. The research engages literary analysis to examine the textual structures and global influences of anecdotal evidence. The circulation of anecdotal evidence was enlivened by eighteenth-century coffee-houses and salons. But rather than focus on such elite spaces, this project will show that information exchanges of an anecdotal nature enabled knowledge to spread from marginalized individuals and groups. When certain kinds of ideas, experiences or experiments were framed as 'anecdotal', the intention was often to proscribe them from mainstream thought. The anecdote known as 'The Woman of the Popo Country' first appeared on record when it was submitted to the British Government in 1788 by slave-owner Stephen Fuller as second-hand evidence relating to medical and botanical practices in Jamaica. It tells the story of a planter discovering the sudden deaths of a great many enslaved people from a mysterious contagion. An African woman is identified as having struck them down using nefarious powers, and her house is found to be filled with the 'implements of her Trade, consisting of Rags, Feathers, bones of Cats, a prodigious Quantity of dirt, Balls of Earth or Clay, and a thousand other articles'. Dismissing her botanical knowledge as 'superstition', the contents of her hut are condemned to burn, and the mysterious disease instantly cured.The life of this anecdote did not end in its use as evidence for what plantation authorities called the 'false' knowledge of African-Caribbean peoples. This story (and the nexus of related anecdotes) subsequently appeared in dozens of other works. The story's structure often changed, sometimes foregrounding its oral transmission as second-hand knowledge, elsewhere taking on the guise of formal reportage. In some versions, the anecdote was transcribed verbatim in a different context. While the first version is intended to elevate European knowledge over African-Caribbean, some later European treatises couched the anecdote in great esteem for the accuracy of African natural knowledge.This anecdote's persistence and metamorphosis as it was transmitted back and forth between Jamaica and Britain, first as state testimony, then in newspapers, natural historical treatises, and fiction, reveal the specific geographical and textual routes anecdotes could take. My research will trace other examples of the transnational travels of medical and natural philosophical anecdotes, addressing the complications of textual elasticity and rigidity and asking what the ways in which anecdotes are formed, transmitted and recalibrated can tell us about cross-border literary production. Scrutinizing the archival gaps that exist in relation to marginalized knowledge, the project examines the significance of anecdotes to ideas that were excluded by Enlightenment institutions while also revealing their importance to the cultural history of science and to the understanding of Enlightenment literary cultures.

什么是轶事证据，它与漫长的18世纪全球互联性的巨大变化有什么关系，它讲述了什么样的科学故事？这则轶事在英国启蒙时代的谈话文化中作为一种文学形式而崭露头角。世纪的用法暗示轶事传达了秘密或未发表的知识，而18世纪则强调了关于惊人事件的轶事，在收集文化和文学短暂性充满19-世纪文学和历史轶事汇编之前。在科学交流中，轶事提供了不同于其他实验和观察叙述的非正式证据。该项目展示了英国旅游，贸易和帝国的全球电路如何在一个时期促成了对轶事交流的新重视，当时与医学和自然哲学有关的非正式证据在跨国流通中迅速增加。该研究采用文学分析来考察轶事证据的文本结构和全球影响。18世纪的咖啡馆和沙龙活跃了轶事证据的流通。但是，该项目并不关注这些精英空间，而是将表明，轶事性质的信息交流使知识能够从边缘化的个人和群体中传播出去。当某些想法、经验或实验被框定为“轶事”时，其意图往往是将它们从主流思想中排除。1788年，奴隶主斯蒂芬·富勒（Stephen Fuller）作为与牙买加医疗和植物学实践有关的第二手证据，将这则被称为“波波国家的女人”的轶事首次提交给英国政府。它讲述了一个种植园主发现许多奴隶突然死于一种神秘的传染病的故事。一个非洲女人被认定是用邪恶的力量把他们打倒的，她的房子被发现装满了“她的贸易工具，包括破布，羽毛，猫的骨头，大量的泥土，地球或粘土球，以及一千种其他物品”。她的植物学知识被斥为“迷信”，她的小屋里的东西被判烧毁，这种神秘的疾病立即被治愈。这件轶事的生命并没有结束，因为它被用作种植园当局所谓的非洲-加勒比人的“虚假”知识的证据。这个故事（以及相关轶事的联系）随后出现在数十部其他作品中。故事的结构经常变化，有时候把它的口头传播作为二手知识，在其他地方则以正式的报告文学为幌子。在某些版本中，这则轶事是在不同的背景下逐字转录的。虽然第一个版本的目的是提高欧洲的知识超过非洲-加勒比地区，一些后来的欧洲论文表达了对非洲自然知识的准确性非常尊重的轶事。这件轶事的持久性和变形，因为它是在牙买加和英国之间来回传输，首先作为国家证词，然后在报纸，自然历史论文和小说，揭示了轶事可能经过的特定地理和文本路径。我的研究将追踪医学和自然哲学轶事的跨国旅行的其他例子，解决文本弹性和刚性的并发症，并询问轶事的形成，传播和重新校准的方式可以告诉我们关于跨境文学生产。该项目仔细研究了与边缘化知识有关的档案空白，探讨了轶事对启蒙机构所排斥的思想的重要性，同时也揭示了它们对科学文化史和启蒙文学文化的理解的重要性。