scholarly journals Carl Linnaeus and the Visual Representation of Nature

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Charmantier

Abstract The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) is reputed to have transformed botanical practice by shunning the process of illustrating plants and relying on the primacy of literary descriptions of plant specimens. Botanists and historians have long debated Linnaeus's capacities as a draftsman. While some of his detailed sketches of plants and insects reveal a sure hand, his more general drawings of landscapes and people seem ill-executed. The overwhelming consensus, based mostly on his Lapland diary (1732), is that Linnaeus could not draw. Little has been said, however, on the role of drawing and other visual representations in Linnaeus's daily work as seen in his other numerous manuscripts. These manuscripts, held mostly at the Linnean Society of London, are peppered with sketches, maps, tables, and diagrams. Reassessing these manuscripts, along with the printed works that also contain illustrations of plant species, shows that Linnaeus's thinking was profoundly visual and that he routinely used visual representational devices in his various publications. This paper aims to explore the full range of visual representations Linnaeus used through his working life, and to reevaluate the epistemological value of visualization in the making of natural knowledge. By analyzing Linnaeus's use of drawings, maps, tables, and diagrams, I will show that he did not, as has been asserted, reduce the discipline of botany to text, and that his visual thinking played a fundamental role in his construction of new systems of classification.

Since its de facto creation, Israel has endeavoured to legitimize its existence and mystify the ethnic cleansing it perpetrated in 1948, systematically working to efface historic Palestine from the Arab and global public memory. Visual discourse plays a constitutive role in the construction and preservation of national themes. This paper, a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of visual representations, aimed to examine how visual representation serves to memorialize and reconstruct national themes, and so how this semiotic mode of representation can act as a form of counter-hegemonic discourse against attempts at the memoricide of the other and mystification of history. Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s(2006) grammar of visual design as a framework for visual analysis, this social semiotic research analyzed the visual structure of a number of Nakba images to examine the role of visual representations in the memorialization of key Palestinian national themes, and so the reconstruction of historic Palestine. The study shows how national themes visually represented, such as ethnic cleansing and Right of Return, serve as a constant reminder of the Nakba, stressing their sociopolitical and emancipatory role in shaping the Palestinian collective consciousness about their past, present and future. Exploration of further visual signs can reveal more the function of visual and multimodal communication in the preservation of important national themes and role in national liberation.


Author(s):  
Anna Michalak

Using the promotional meeting of Dorota Masłowska’s book "More than you can eat" (16 April 2015 in the Bar Studio, Warsaw), as a case study, the article examines the role author plays in it and try to show how the author itself can become the literature. As a result of the transformation of cultural practices associated with the new media, the author’s figure has gained much greater visibility which consequently changed its meaning. In the article, Masłowska’s artistic strategy is compared to visual autofiction in conceptual art and interpreted through the role of the performance and visual representations in the creation of the image or author’s brand.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. McGillis ◽  
V. P. Carey

The Marangoni effect on the critical heat flux (CHF) condition in pool boiling of binary mixtures has been identified and its effect has been quantitatively estimated with a modified model derived from hydrodynamics. The physical process of CHF in binary mixtures, and models used to describe it, are examined in the light of recent experimental evidence, accurate mixture properties, and phase equilibrium revealing a correlation to surface tension gradients and volatility. A correlation is developed from a heuristic model including the additional liquid restoring force caused by surface tension gradients. The CHF condition was determined experimentally for saturated methanol/water, 2-propanol/water, and ethylene glycol/water mixtures, over the full range of concentrations, and compared to the model. The evidence in this study demonstrates that in a mixture with large differences in surface tension, there is an additional hydrodynamic restoring force affecting the CHF condition.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146801732110097
Author(s):  
Michelle van der Tier ◽  
Koen Hermans ◽  
Marianne Potting

Summary Professional standards state that social workers in public welfare organisations should act as state and citizen-agents. However, the literature provides little insight into how social workers navigate this dual responsibility in their daily work. To address this gap, we used Maynard-Moody and Musheno’s theory on state and citizens-agent narratives to analyse street-level practices of social workers in three local welfare organisations in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. This article explores how three specific organisational mechanisms (decision-making authority; the role of the front-line manager and the degree of specialisation) affect the ways social workers navigate both agent narratives in public welfare organisations. The data were gathered by a mixed method design of in-depth interviews and focus groups. Findings Our study shows that social workers struggle with the tensions that intrude between the state and citizen-agent narrative. We found that the extent to which both narratives are adopted by social workers is affected by a complicated interaction between the beliefs of social workers about social justice and responsiveness and the selected organisational mechanisms. Moreover, we found that critical reflection and a supportive attitude of front-line managers can help social workers to manage their double responsibility in practice. Application Our cross-national study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between organisational mechanisms and the moral deliberations of social workers regarding their dual responsibility. It provides in-depth insights into the tensions and conflicts social workers in different contexts face daily on account of their dual responsibility.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-384
Author(s):  
Elena Tello-García ◽  
Nancy Gamboa-Badilla ◽  
Enrique Álvarez ◽  
Laura Fuentes ◽  
Corina Basnou ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Yletyinen ◽  
George L. W. Perry ◽  
Olivia R. Burge ◽  
Norman W. H. Mason ◽  
Philip Stahlmann‐Brown

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-327
Author(s):  
Barbara Heebels ◽  
Irina Van Aalst

CCTV surveillance is a cultural practice and collective effort. CCTV not only involves a technical assemblage that is used to discipline the surveilled, it is also a social assemblage in which the informal practices of operators play a major role in the multiple interpretations of images. This paper provides insights into the daily work practices and discourses of CCTV operators and their supervisors through observations of and interviews in the control room of public CCTV surveillance in Rotterdam. By providing a better understanding of the role of people in socio-technical assemblages, this paper contributes to the discussion on human mediation in computerized networks. The paper contributes to the expanding literature on surveillance as a cultural practice by combining insights on social sorting with insights on collective evaluation of unfolding situations—i.e., how group dynamics within the control room influence how people are “judged.” Building on Goffman’s frame analysis, the paper reveals the crucial role of talk and humor in re-performing what happens on the streets as well as evaluating situations and the people watched. Moreover, it discusses how these collective re-performances of what is being watched both reproduce and reshape “othering” practices within the control room. The paper shows how humorous utterances play an important part in overcoming hierarchy and collectively managing emotions, and explores how this humor influences profiling on the basis of bodily appearance.


2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1736) ◽  
pp. 2269-2274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Bebber ◽  
Mark A. Carine ◽  
Gerrit Davidse ◽  
David J. Harris ◽  
Elspeth M. Haston ◽  
...  

Discovering biological diversity is a fundamental goal—made urgent by the alarmingly high rate of extinction. We have compiled information from more than 100 000 type specimens to quantify the role of collectors in the discovery of plant diversity. Our results show that more than half of all type specimens were collected by less than 2 per cent of collectors. This highly skewed pattern has persisted through time. We demonstrate that a number of attributes are associated with prolific plant collectors: a long career with increasing productivity and experience in several countries and plant families. These results imply that funding a small number of expert plant collectors in the right geographical locations should be an important element in any effective strategy to find undiscovered plant species and complete the inventory of the world flora.


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