Constructing the Zoo: Science, Society, and Animal Life at the Paris Menagerie, 1793-1838

这个项目的目标是完成一本关于第一个公共动物园的目的和实践的书的档案研究，巴黎自然历史博物馆的动物园。该动物园建于法国大革命鼎盛时期，位于世界上首屈一指的自然历史机构内，被认为具有巨大的科学潜力，以及重要的社会、政治和道德潜力。该项目主要关注动物园存在的前半个世纪。这项研究将探讨以下几个主题：(1)动物园所能服务的不同功能和利益；(2)这些早期期望在实践过程中实现、修改或重新制定的情况；（三）动物园的动物和动物生活的科学化、大众化建设；(4)活体动物在博物馆生活中所扮演的有问题的角色；(5)动物园管理员弗雷德里克·居维叶（Frederic Cuvier）在动物园进行的动物行为研究；(6)参与动物园运营的多个参与者。这项研究将主要在巴黎的法国国家档案馆进行。PI将完成对大量手稿的检查，这些手稿是科学历史学家以前没有利用过的：来自自然历史博物馆教授每周会议的官方报告和其他文件。这些材料可以在博物馆运作的更广泛的背景下详细地重建动物园的生活。要研究的主题和要使用的方法表明了这一研究对科学史的智力重要性。这对于理解居维叶、拉马克和若弗鲁瓦·圣伊莱尔时代的法国动物学有着直接的重要性，当时法国的动物学是首屈一指的。它将对动物园的科学史和社会史的近代史作出重要贡献，一方面是因为巴黎动物园在19世纪的动物园建设浪潮中扮演了一个典范的角色，另一方面是因为巴黎博物馆的档案使人们能够详细地研究这个19世纪的动物园。就更广泛的影响而言，这项工作对动物园不断发展的目的和对动物本性的科学和大众理解的双重问题产生了影响。近年来，关于这两个话题的争论需要放在历史研究能够承受的更广阔的视野中。通过了解像巴黎博物馆的动物园这样的关键机构的目标、成就和缺点，人们可以更深入地了解今天动物园作为社会机构和科学调查场所的持续承诺和问题，以及动物/人类的相似性、差异和相互关系的观点是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。

PROJECT SUMMARY The goal of this project is to complete the archival research for a book on the purposes and practices of the first public zoo, the menagerie of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Founded at the height of the French Revolution, and situated at the world's premier institution for natural history, the menagerie was conceived as having great scientific potential as well as significant social, political, and moralpotential. The project focuses on the first half-century of the menagerie's existence. The study will examine several topics: (1.) the different functions and interests that the menagerie was capable of serving; (2.)the circumstances under which these early expectations were realized, revised, or reformulated in the course of practice; (3.) the animals of the menagerie and the scientific and popular construction of animal life; (4.) the problematic role that living animals played in the life of the museum; (5.) the studies of animal behavior conducted at the menagerie by Frederic Cuvier, warden of the menagerie; (6.) the multiple actors involved in the menagerie's operations. The research will be conducted primarily in Paris at the French National Archives. The PI will complete examination of an extensive collection of manuscripts that historians of science have not exploited previously: the official reports and other documents from the weekly meetings of the professors of the Museum d'HistoireNaturelle. These materials permit a detailed reconstruction of the life of the menagerie, within the broader context of the operations of the museum .The intellectual importance of this research for the history of science is suggested by the topics to be studied and the methodologiesto be used. It is of direct importance for understanding zoology in France in the age of Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, when French zoology was second to none. It will be an important contribution to recent historical on the scientific andsocial history of zoos, both because of the role of the Paris menagerie as a model for the great wave of zoo construction that occurred in the 19th century and because of the detail in which the Paris Museum's archives allow one to examine this nineteenth century zoo. In terms of broader impacts the work bears on the dual questions of the evolving purposes of zoos and the scientific and popular understanding of animal nature. Controversies over both ofthese topics in recent years need to be situated in the broader perspective that historical study can afford. By understanding the aims, accomplishments, and also the shortcomings of a key institution like the menagerie of the Paris Museum, one can gain a deeper sense of the continuing promises and problems of zoos today, both as social institutions and as sites for scientific investigation, and how views of animal/human similarities, differences, and interrelations have changed over time.