The knowledgeable traveler or Chuck and Bob

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The knowledgeable traveleror Chuck and Bobs
most excellent adventure

• HUM 201
• Fall 2005
• Lecture 10

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Points of departure

• Middle World as the space of new relationships
  and possibilities
• Radical empiricism helps us understand how
  changes in these relationships can lead to new
  knowledge of our environment
• Two important places in the production of
  knowledge of the world field and laboratory

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Charles Darwin

• 1809-1882
• One of five children
• Father-in-law (also uncle) the Wedgwood of
  Wedgwood Pottery fame
• Landed Gentry
• Publishes Origin of Species 1859

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Scientific Places 1

• The field (Middle World)
• The space of the tour
• Collecting specimens
• Note taking
• Observing habitats at the site
• Involves talking to locals

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• HMS Beagle (1841 watercolor by Owen Stanley)
• 1831-1836

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The mission

• To continue charting work in South America
• Chronometric readings around the globe
  (longitude)
• Captain Fitzroy also had four native Fuegians he
  educated in Europe

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Darwin on the Beagle

• Darwin engaged as a naturalist
• Engage in exploration and documentation of
  specimens
• Serve as a companion for Captain Fitzroy
• Actually the third person asked
• Ten months after his return Darwin begins his
  first notebook on the transmutation of the
  species
• Not wholly convinced of transmutation on voyage
• Actually eats important specimens
• For finches has to borrow others labeled
  specimens
• Much of knowledge in this space is description

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• 12 shirts?1 carpet bag?1 pair slippers?1 pair of
  light walking shoes?1 microscope (a single lens
  model by Bancks Son, London)?1 geological
  compass?1 plain compass?2 pistols (with spare
  parts)?1 rifle (with spare parts)?1 telescope?1
  pencil case?1 geological hammer?5 simisometers?3
  mountain barometers?1 clinometer?1 camera
  obscura?1 hygrometer (belonged to FitzRoy)?1
  taxidermy book?2-3 Spanish language books?14
  other books, including Humboldt's "Personal
  Narrative" and Lyell's "Principles of Geology
  Vol. 1"?1 coin purse (Fanny Owen's gift)?1 pin
  with a lock of Sarah Owen's hair (Fanny's sister)

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The Voyage
One of those journeys that start and end at the
same place with a Middle World
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• "These poor wretches were stunted in their
  growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white
  paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair
  entangled, their voices discordant, their
  gestures violent and without dignity. Viewing
  such men, one can hardly make oneself believe
  they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the
  same world." ?-- Charles Darwin

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• A watercolor of a native from the Tierra del
  Fuego, from around the time that Charles Darwin
  was on his Voyage of the Beagle (1830s).

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Knowledge as description

• Observation comes from the fabric of experience
• Strong bodily presence
• Mixes scientific and social, natural and civil
• Empire, race, other, scientific knowledge always
  interrelated

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Falklands

• Zoophytes-plantlike animal such as coral or sea
  sponge

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Scientific Places 2

• The museum
• Specimens sorted
• Compared to to other specimens
• Knowledge is created by organizing observations
  in the field
• Creating the map from the tour
• Stories created by using spatial practices to
  navigate between these two places

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Knowledge as possession
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Knowledge through artifacts

• National Museum
• Darwin needs to hear that certain samples not
  found on mainland

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Radical Empiricism

• Knowledge is of elements in relation.
• Create new knowledge by changing the relationship
  of the elements to the self or to each other.
• In the museum one can easily compare samples from
  different locations (transform the tour into the
  map)

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Creation stories

• Utilizing the spatial practices of the field and
  the museum Darwin transforms a travel story into
  a creation story
• Tension between the nomad and exile (in the
  field) and home (museum).
• Are there different types of knowledge for these
  different states of being?