Animate Embryos

Embryology is the science of development. Historically, Christian Heinrich Pander and Karl Ernst von Baer are considered to be the founding fathers of the modern discipline in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In my talk, I will argue that understanding the ‚form of becoming’ in embryology required the establishment of a new conceptual framework, new experimental practices, observational techniques and new forms of visual representation of the living. I will trace visual and experimental techniques from the beginning of the nineteenth century to recent developments, from pictorial sequences to digital simulations of cell migration during embryogenesis. In particular, I will discuss the impact of new techniques of imaging and computing embryogenesis such as approaches of ‘in toto imaging’ on the understanding of embryological development in particular and on the biological concept of development in general.