Infrastructures of Natural History

This presentation turns to the history of natural history in and around Japan during the second half of the eighteenth century, in order to examine what happens when we think about natural history through the lens of its infrastructures. By affording the passage of humans and their goods, physical and knowledge infrastructures made the accumulation, exchange and translation of naturalists, as well as the objects and products of their explorations, possible. As part of this examination, the presentation will consider the historical fragility of infrastructures and their components, whether we’re talking about a ship or a taxonomic system, which required great efforts to maintain, improve and replace them. So too will attention be given to the various uses to which the same infrastructures might be put, as well as the various meanings that might be attributed to them. Finally, while addressing the roles played by infrastructures in constructing the investigation and understanding of nature, it will also focus on how elements of nature were recruited as components of infrastructure - sometimes with far-reaching environmental and epistemological consequences.