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

像约翰·贝克曼（1737-1811）这样的历史演员体现了博学多才的理想，他研究、分类和描述了“自然领域”。与此同时，他们在18世纪经济的关键部门（林业、农业、农业、采矿、水利工程、贸易和手工业）建立了一种新的应用学术知识形式。对于后一个部门，贝克曼引入了术语“技术”（Technologie），指的是对工艺及其对自然资源的加工的知识的“系统排序”。贝克曼的学术活动——作为欧洲学术网络的一部分，在Göttingen的改革派大学的知识环境中分析，以及全球（帝国）纠缠——是应用自然史领域的特征。因此，它们构成了关于人与自然关系的学术/科学知识的一个非常合适的研究和比较对象。该项目旨在显著提高我们对人类与自然关系的应用学术知识是如何演变的理解，并促进了中欧现代时期开始时这些关系的根本转变。为此，它将研究应用自然史的行动者、实践、空间和学术网络，以确定其开发的特征和创新的“知识生产”和“环境技术”。该项目旨在在几个相互关联的空间层面上进行研究。因此，应用自然史的Göttingen案例被定义为地方、区域和全球过程的共同产物。作物、森林树种或园林植物的迁移和驯化尝试将与处理“本地”和“外来自然”的知识、理论和实践的流通一样，成为项目的核心。“Göttingen案例”将与中欧类似的应用自然历史中心进行对比。该项目将通过询问应用自然史如何涉及国家和帝国建设来解决政治史方面的问题。Beckmann收集的采矿和水力技术模型，他广泛的地图收集和通信，以及他的出版物和编辑期刊的大量收集，使Göttingen成为这个项目非常合适的起点。这项研究将由Göttingen大学收集管理系作为该项目的合作伙伴提供便利。市政、大学和下撒克逊州的档案将允许详细重建贝克曼的经济花园（包括他的农业和园艺工具的教学收集）和其他“知识设备”，以及应用自然史的政治含义。

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.