Karine Chemla is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University Paris Diderot and University Paris Panthéon Sorbonne.
Evelyn Fox Keller is Professor Emerita of the History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Karine Chemla is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University Paris Diderot and University Paris Panthéon Sorbonne.
Evelyn Fox Keller is Professor Emerita of the History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From Quarry to Paper: Cuvier’s Three Epistemological Cultures Available to Purchase
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Published:March 2017
Bruno Belhoste, 2017. "From Quarry to Paper: Cuvier’s Three Epistemological Cultures", Cultures without Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge, Karine Chemla, Evelyn Fox Keller
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This chapter proposes a fresh approach, based on the notion of epistemological culture, to the seminal work of Cuvier on mammal paleontology. It recounts the story of the reconstruction of Tertiary mammals on the basis of scattered and incomplete fossils found in gypsum quarries around Paris. In the process of transforming a technical problem of fossil osteology into a new research strategy, Cuvier mobilized three different epistemological cultures: a museum culture, developed by collectors, curators, and taxonomers; late Newtonianism, which the Parisian physicists of his time promoted; and antiquarianism practiced by historians who claimed to restore vestiges of the past to their authentic condition. The chapter shows how Cuvier used these three cultures to justify his reconstruction of extinct animals and to reduce the ideological tensions generated by this reconstruction.
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