Revelation

This post is somewhat prompted by comments that were made to Outer and Inter Pretation.

The vertebrate body is an extraordinary jumble of overlapping systems somehow coordinated as a marvelous machine. When viewed all at once, the whole structure is so complex, so “busy” that it defies our understanding. We have to take it apart, system by system — and the pedagogical devices for such analysis are legion. Consider the “transparent” man or woman of our science museums, and the standard mode of public demonstration — bones first, then nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics, organs, muscles, and skin, added step by step from inside out, until we clothe the terror of Halloween with the flesh of aesthetic comfort.

Squirrel Monkey / Saimiri sciurus

Scientists have struggled for centuries to disentangle the complexity by highlighting single systems and removing all others. Underlying skeletons are easy to retain, overlying soft anatomy more difficult. Many of the most famous “preparations” of our anatomical museums present just nerves, just blood vessels, or just the lymphatic system. The search for new methods goes on. Here we see two squirrel monkeys treated to preserve the vascular system alone. Blood vessels are injected with a liquid treated by a catalyst that will cause it to polymerize (harden) at room temperature. Surrounding tissues are then dissolved away, leaving a complete image of the animal expressed in but one of its “layers.”

If you claim that the only thing you see in the two photographs above is the vascular system of squirrel monkeys I won’t believe you. There are many “layers” of the “whole structure” that are available to science — but there are also “layers” that are not.

All of the text and images in this post are from the book, Illuminations: A Bestiary; photographs by Rosamond Wolff Purcell with caption text by Stephen Jay Gould (1986).

Mastodon / Mastodon americanus

Nothing so stuns my mind as an image misinterpreted in scale or orders of magnitude because it has no sure reference point in human bodies or artifacts. The Grand Teton Mountains are named for their whimsical resemblance to the female breast. Fossil mastodons (extinct elephants) evolved molars with cusps in pinnacled rows — so another man of science named them “breast tooth.” This ancient tooth, in the cradle of cotton wool provided by museum curators for its protection, might pass for Wyoming.

Ibis / Plegadis falcinellus

In a rare direct imposition upon modes of realities of preservation in museums, Rosamond has playfully drawn circles in the universal patina of all collections — dust. Thus, the banded contrast of nature and storage combines with the natural form of eggs to force these disappointed containers of future ibises into similarity with the beach-rounded pebbles made of dark igneous rock intruded by bands of white quartz or calcite — and so often found on New England’s beaches. Eggs achieve their streamlining by direct shaping in the oviduct, pebbles by the opposite route of erosion sculpturing from original roughness — but the common form does reflect a higher similarity of forces.

Since dust pervades museums, and seems both ineradicable and constant, sleuths may use its thickness as a guide to the age and stratigraphy of collections. I once opened a drawer in an old part of our collections. The contents had been dumped and sheepishly piled back in disarray — but obviously very long ago as the dust testifies. I found a note, also encrusted by the universal patina. It was dated 1861 and contained both an apology and exculpating explanation, penned by a terrified student lest the intense and temperamental boss of the museum, Louis Agassiz himself, discover such a calamity without appropriate documentation. Agassiz, obviously, never opened the drawer. The student, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, went on to become a famous scientist.

Lobodon / Lobodon carcinophagus

Lobodon, literally the “bumpy-toothed” seal, uses the straining mesh of corrugated teeth to filter krill (small arthropods) from the plankton.

[ ... ] Rosamond and I agreed at the outset that we would trust each other’s different professionalisms and would not question choice of photos or textual themes. Yet we argued more about this photo than any other. I found the identification number ordinary and discordant — the ubiquitous method used by museums to catalogue specimens and, incidentally, so often to destroy their aesthetic integrity. She found it striking and unusual — a kind of prison signature with many layers of meaning. It is well that an artist and a natural historian should see the meaning of a simple alteration so differently — and as a result of so many years spent thinking in a certain unchallenged way.

-Julie

http://www.unrealnature.com/