The knowledgeable traveler or Chuck and Bob’s most excellent adventure

1. The knowledgeable traveleror Chuck and Bob’s most excellent adventure HUM 201 Fall 2005 Lecture 10

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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

9. 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)

10. The Voyage One of those journeys that start and end at the same place with a Middle World

13. "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

14. 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).

15. 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

16. Falklands • Zoophytes-plantlike animal such as coral or sea sponge

18. 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

19. Knowledge as possession

20. Knowledge through artifacts • National Museum • Darwin needs to hear that certain samples not found on mainland

21. 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)

24. 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?