Knowing Nature: Art and Science in Philadelphia 1740-1840

About this book

Philadelphia developed the most active scientific community in early America fostering an influential group of naturalist-artists including William Bartram Charles Willson Peale Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon whose work has been addressed by many monographic studies. However as the groundbreaking essays in Knowing Nature demonstrate the examination of nature stimulated not only forms of artistic production traditionally associated with scientific practice of the day but processes of making not ordinarily linked to science. The often surprisingly intimate connections between and among these creative activities and the objects they engendered are explored through the essays in this book challenging the hierarchy that is generally assumed to have been at play in the study of nature from the natural sciences through the fine and decorative arts and ultimately popular and material culture. Indeed the many ways in which the means of knowing nature were reversedin which artistic and artisanal culture informed scientific interpretations of the natural worldforms a central theme of this pioneering publication.