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Irreplaceability and Historicity:
the Context of
the Second Alexandrian Tragedy
Losses of natural science collections constitute global disasters - losses to humanity. In May 2010, nearly 80,000 preserved snakes and thousands of specimens of spiders and scorpions were destroyed after a fire broke in a wet collection at a research centre -Instituto Butantan - in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Read more.....
Specimens of Large Mammals from the Congo
basin in the infamous basement of Musée
Royale d'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium
What is Natural History?
"In the context of the life sciences, we characterize natural history as the arena of scientific enquiry that encompasses the discovery, elucidation and classification of the idiographic details of extinct and extant biodiversity. Thus, embracing comparative biology,natural history embraces the spectrum of idiographic research that discovers and describes particular facts: evolutionary affinities and distributions of biota, detailing the nuances of the behavior, biochemistry, physiology and autecology of individual species. This is exemplified by how idiographic details about individuals, collated in a consummate inventory, structure and fuel nomothetic research; all these processes entailed in integrating knowledge are framed by the Idiographic–Nomothetic Mutualism." (Cotterill and Foissner 2010: 299)
The Epistemology of Natural Science Collections
Musée Royale d'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium
Beyond and embracing DNA sequencing......
This photo depicts specimens of both species
of African elephants, in the von Humboldt Museum, Berlin. Part and
parcel of their historical origins and provenance, nearly
every specimen is from habitats where Loxodonta
has since become extinct.
‘Tentelic’ means ‘‘to hold together a web’’. A most critical epistemological contribution of preserved specimens is their existence as tentelic tokens of verifiable information; the veracity of particular knowledge causally relates to a specimen’s existence and provenance, and its other affinities with the real world (Cotterill 2002).
Causes of the Second Alexandrian Tragedy
An entire wing of the von Humboldt Museum, Berlin
was blown out by an allied bomb in 1944. Still
unrepaired at the time I took this photograph
(February 2004), it symbolizes the widespread neglect,
especially by decision makers, of the significance of
natural science collections, and the vulnerability of
museums to political upheavals, which not only
include warfare, but the deprecations of bureaucrats,
scientifically illiterate and other.
Publications
Cotterill, F.P.D. & W. Foissner 2010. A pervasive denigration of Natural History misconstrues how biodiversity inventories and taxonomy underpin scientific knowledge. Biodiversity and Conservation . 19: 291-303. PDF
Cotterill, F.P.D. 2002. The future of Natural Science Collections into the 21st Century. Conferencia de Clausura. In: Actas del I Simposio sobre el Patrimonio Natural en las Colecciones Públicas en España (Vitoria, 25 - 27 Septiembre 2001). Departamento de Cultura, Diputación Foral de Alava. Vitoria. pp. 237-282. ISBN: 84-7821-497-6. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. 1999. Toward exorcism of the ghost of W. T. Thistleton-Dyer: a comment on "overduplication" and the scientific properties, uses and values of natural science specimens. Taxon 48:1-5. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. 1997. The growth of the WCCR or the extinction of biosystematic resources? Beyond the Second World Congress on Natural History Collections. ICOM Natural History Collections Newsletter 11: 7-11. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. 1997. The Second Alexandrian Tragedy, and the fundamental relationship between biological collections and scientific knowledge. In: The Values and Valuation of Natural Science Collections. (Proceedings of Conference at the Manchester Museum, Manchester, UK. 19th-21st April 1995.) (Eds J. R. Nudds and C. R. Pettitt) pp. 217-241. Geological Society, London. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. and J. M. Dangerfield. 1997. The state of biological knowledge. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12: 206. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. 1995. Systematics, biological knowledge and environmental conservation. Biodiversity and Conservation 4: 183-205. PDF
Cotterill, F. P. D. 1995. Conservation of biodiversity in central Africa: the role of the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe. In: Bennum, L. A., R. A. Aman & S. A. Crafter (eds). Conservation of Biodiversity in Africa:local initiatives and institutional roles. Proc. Conf. held at the National Museums of Kenya, 30 August-3 September 1992. Samara Publishing, Cardigan, UK. pg. 321.
Cotterill, F. P. D., C. W. Hustler, A. L. Sparrow & D. G. Broadley (1993) Conservation of biodiversity in central Africa: the role of the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe. Zim. Sci. News 27:32-34.
Cotterill, F. P. D. (1993) Biodiversity research at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe. Geographical Education Mag. 16:34-38. PDF
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