Making Visible: The visual and graphic practices of the early Royal Society

伦敦皇家学会成立于1660年，是早期现代科学的重要机构，致力于对自然的集体调查。它赞助的许多出版物，如罗伯特·胡克的《显微摄影》或弗朗西斯·维卢格比的《双鱼史》，以及它的期刊《哲学汇刊》，都有大量的插图。该协会的档案还包括丰富多样的图像。然而，在皇家学会的案例中，图像在发展和交流科学知识过程中的作用一直没有得到充分的研究。格雷沙姆学院学会的前五十年是一个形成时期，在此期间，学会努力制定战略，提出一种新的知识形式，并在科学事务中建立自己的权威。该项目将首次全面介绍早期皇家学会如何以复杂而巧妙的方式利用视觉资源对自然进行集体调查，以及皇家学会如何反过来帮助定义和建立早期现代时期的科学视觉文化。它将对视觉在科学经验和观察史上的作用做出更广泛的贡献。该项目将揭示皇家学会迄今未知或研究不足的图片来源，并与早期皇家学会的其他档案和出版来源一起研究它们。与科学史学家、艺术史学家、这本书的历史学家、版画、素描、科学仪器和草药的保护人员和馆长的合作，将导致对皇家学会院士采用的各种可视化技术进行全面的说明。该项目将首先对皇家学会成立50年来使用的视觉来源和材料进行全面调查，找到幸存的材料并确定参与其中的图形工匠的身份。这将是研究两个关键主题的基础。i)图像制作。皇家学会在一个动态过程中生成和部署视觉资源，在选择对象和仪器(科学和图形)、绘制、复制、更正和授权图像的过程中，涉及复杂的程序和大量的人员，以及在决定是否发布图像以及在什么媒体上发布图像时。幸存的材料揭示了在可视化方面丰富而多样的合作：具有一系列技能和背景的图形工匠，具有艺术鉴赏大师的皇家学会会员，以及学会从彼此中看到和理解自然的收藏品。这样的合作为科学的视觉素养奠定了基础。图像塑造和促进了皇家学会知识的形成和传播，在交流新发现、解决冲突以及形成和定义社区方面做出了贡献。在建立学会在知识问题上的权威方面，图像与文本和物体一起发挥了重要作用。了解皇家学会的视觉和图形实践将有助于了解科学视觉文化的出现，这种文化塑造并维持了一个自然哲学家社区。艺术、社会科学和人文科学研究中心充满活力的多学科研究文化是这个项目的理想学术背景。它有一个活跃的博士后社区，参与各种项目，包括视觉和物质文化以及数字人文。它与南加州大学早期现代研究所和亨廷顿图书馆的国际合作为思想和方法的交叉交流带来了进一步的机会。除了虚拟和实体展览外，与皇家学会图书馆及其图片图书馆的合作将确保该项目的研究成果持续提供给更广泛的受众。

The Royal Society of London, founded in 1660, was an important institution for early modern science, dedicated to the collective investigation of nature. Many of the publications it sponsored, such as Robert Hooke's Micrographia or Francis Willughby's Historia piscium, as well as its journal, Philosophical Transactions, contained extensive illustrations. The archives of the Society also include a rich variety of images. Yet, the function of images in the process of developing and communicating scientific knowledge has been under-studied in the case of the Royal Society. The first fifty years of the Society at Gresham College was a formative period during which it grappled with strategies to present a new form of knowledge and establish its own authority in scientific matters. This project will result in the first comprehensive account of the complex and ingenious ways in which visual resources were deployed for the collective investigation of nature by the early Royal Society, and how the Royal Society in turn helped define and establish a scientific visual culture in the early modern period. It will contribute more generally to the role of the visual in the history of scientific experience and observation.The project will bring to light hitherto unknown or under-researched pictorial sources from the Royal Society, and study them alongside other archival and published sources of the early Royal Society. Collaboration with historians of science, historians of art, historians of the book, conservators and curators of prints, drawings, scientific instruments and herbaria, will lead to a comprehensive account of the various visualization techniques deployed by Fellows of the Royal Society. The project will first carry out a full survey of the visual sources and materials used by the Royal Society in its first fifty years by locating surviving material and identifying identities of the graphic craftsmen involved. This will be the basis for investigating two key themes.i) Image-making.The Royal Society generated and deployed visual resources in a dynamic process involving complex procedures and numerous people in the selection of objects and instruments (scientific as well as graphic), drawing, copying, correcting and authorizing images, as well as in the decision to publish an image or not, and in what medium. The surviving materials reveal rich and heterogeneous collaborations in visualization: graphic craftsmen with a range of skills and background and Fellows of the Royal Society with virtuoso appreciation of art and collections learned to see and understand nature from each other. Such collaborations laid the foundation for a visual literacy of science.ii) Knowledge-making. Images shaped and contributed to the formation and dissemination of knowledge for the Royal Society, in communicating new discoveries, resolving conflicts, and forming and defining a community. Images played an important role alongside texts and objects in establishing the Society's authority in matters of knowledge. Understanding the Royal Society's visual and graphic practices will shed light on the emergence of a visual culture of science that shaped and sustained a community of natural philosophers.The vibrant multi-disciplinary research culture at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities is an ideal academic context for this project. It has an active post-doctoral community engaged in various projects, including visual and material cultures and the digital humanities. Its international collaboration with USC Early Modern Studies Institute and Huntington Library brings further opportunities for the cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches. The collaboration with the Royal Society Library and its Picture Library in addition to a virtual and physical exhibition will ensure the sustained availability of the project's research results to a wider audience.