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Moby-Dick (1851/1931) is a magnificent novel, an American epic, a literary encyclopaedia, a monument of language. Jean-Paul Sartre (1941/1977) called it a Summa, a gigantic, monstrous, antediluvian book. One may read Moby-Dick for several reasons, and from several perspectives: as a novel of adventure, a psychological case history casting an obsessed sea captain, an anthropological study of nineteenth-century maritime life, or a fascinating example of Bakhtinean "heteroglossia". Whenever reference to Moby-Dick is made, the first thing that will come to mind, no doubt, is the novel's fantastic plot, more spectacular than tragic, when the great White Whale at last destroys the destroyer of its species. Indeed, Moby-Dick can be read as an affidavit, a persistent effort of Ishmael -its narrator - to convince us of the fact that things like that can really happen - although in the end hardly anyone will believe him. In this chapter, however, Moby-Dick will be read as a literary document that sets out to tell us something about maritime nature, about the wide, unshored, oceanic expanses and its most eminent inhabitant, the whale - the great Sperm Whale to be exact. Melville's novel constitutes an important file, a chapter in animal history, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Darwin was about to publish his Origin of Species. Moby-Dick is a document that pretends to answer the question What is a whale? Or rather, it stages a struggle between several incompatible answers, yielded by incompatible perspectives on marine life, mutually challenging and criticizing one another. Moreover, these answers entail different ethical judgements on the moral status of the whale and on the moral propriety of whaling. Three perspectives, three ways of answering the question of the whale, as fleshed out in the novel, will be taken into consideration in this chapter: that of the whaler (or "whaleman" as Melville calls him), the scientist, and the philosopher. In this introduction I will sketch them in broad outline, before submitting them to a more careful examination in subsequent sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of literary documents, things are even more complicated. These documents may do various things. Some literary documents set out to analyse nature or, rather, they analyse the ways in which human beings experience nature, under particular conditions. But they may also, in a very explicit manner, study the ways in which scientists interact with nature. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein for instance studies the ways in which particular knowledge forms (notably alchemy and modern chemistry) allow nature to appear. In other words, literary documents may tell us something about nature, or about experiences of nature in the life-world, but they may also tell us something about science, about the way scientists perceive nature, or both. This implies that, if we ask ourselves to what extent literary documents can be epistemologically relevant, the answer is bound to be far from univocal. As became clear in the context of our case studies in previous chapters, literary documents can be helpful when it comes to addressing particular epistemological quandaries. Indeed, they can broaden our understanding of the natural world, as well as of the natural sciences, but they may do so in various ways. In order to answer the question in what ways literary documents are important for epistemology as a research field, we must draw up something like a "typology" of literary forms, a classification of literary genres - from an epistemological perspective of course. Not a typology in terms of "novels" versus "plays", or "poetry" versus "prose", or "tragedy" versus "comedy". What would an epistemological typology of literary forms amount to? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts". Those are the words of the horrible teacher Gradgrind in Dickens's novel Hard Times (1854/1974) who, upon being informed that Sissy's father is a horsebreaker, demands her to give him the definition of a horse. Although Sissy (due to her daily companionship with them) is intimately acquainted with horses, she is nevertheless startled by the question and unable to answer it. "Girl number twenty unable to define a horse! Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!", Gradgrind exclaims, and passes the question over to a boy who perhaps never so much as touched a horse, but who produces the perfect answer right away: "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in spring …" (1974, p. 5). It goes without saying that "girl number twenty", because of her silence, is Dickens's heroine. She knows too much about horses, about their way of being-inthe- world, to force her knowledge of them into a factual definition. That is, she refuses to become a "reasoning animal" in Gradgrind's fashion, someone who defines the world in objective, factual terms. She seems to realize that such a language will not allow us to articulate what horses really are. The animal's way of being is obscured rather than brought to light by the restricted and impoverished language of facts, quantities and definitions. Rather than allowing us to understand them, it is bound to estrange us from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book was published in 1865, shortly after Jules Verne's Voyage to the Centre of the Earth, which was published the year before. In the time-span of a few seconds, and on a much smaller scale, Alice is exposed to similar experiences as Axel in Verne's novel. In Axel's case, the journey is consuming much more time. Indeed, one could say that Carroll's version is a miniaturisation of what in Verne's novel is projected on a grand tableau. But apparently, both authors were fascinated by the same idea: a journey through a tunnel towards the centre of the earth, passing numerous latitudes and longitudes. An important difference is, however, that Verne describes a scientific journey, scientifically documented, indeed: a scholarly expedition to an Icelandic Volcano (Sneffels). The team consists of three members: Otto Lidenbrock, professor of mineralogy at the University of Hamburg, his adolescent cousin Axel and a local Icelandic guide named Hans. But, also in this case, the "quaternity principle", already mentioned in Chapter 9, is at work. Wherever there are three of something (persons, elements, etc.), a fourth is hidden somewhere. And indeed, in Verne's novel, there is a fourth element, a "hidden" scholar, who made the expedition possible and plays a decisive role as the team's informant and predecessor, namely Arne Saknussemm, a "famous alchemist" of the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of Mendel's research is one of the highlights in the history of the life sciences. It has become a scientific legend. In 1865, after 8 long years of careful, time-consuming and laborious experiments with Pisum Sativum (the common garden pea), father Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) of the Augustinian monastery of Brünn (now: Brno) recorded and analysed his findings in a two-part lecture before the Brünn Society for Natural History. Subsequently, he published, in the society's proceedings, a forty four-page article on which his fame still rests (Mendel 1866/1913). He dispatched several copies of it to leading experts in biology and botany but apparently, hardly anyone took notice of it. He did receive an answer from Professor Carl Nägeli of the University of Munich, but even he took 2 months to reply. And instead of becoming interested in Mendel's work, Nägeli tried to persuade him to participate in a research programme of his own. And indeed, in the correspondence that subsequently evolved, Mendel offered his services as an unpaid research assistant, more or less. Mendel had hoped that Nägeli would assess, and even repeat, his experiments on Pisum Sativum, but instead the latter urged him to join his experiments on Hieracium (hawkweed). Their correspondence lingered on for some years (they continued to exchange letter until 1873), centring around Mendel's discouraging problems with his Hawkweed-trials, but eventually it ended in silence. For years to come, Mendel's masterpiece was virtually ignored. Although his article was cited every now and then, it failed to really impress his contemporaries. Then, all of a sudden, in the spring of 1900, his paper was unearthed and rediscovered, posthumously, by three different scholars, simultaneously but independently from one another. They were all active in what was about to become the field of genetics. All of a sudden, Mendel's paper became a scientific classic, the starting point of a new style of research, and its impact was enormous. It was the beginning of a dramatic transition of biology as a field. As a result, researchers suddenly became interested in this enigmatic author, who was almost totally unknown among professionals. But even today, Mendel remains a surprisingly obscure figure. After decades of historical research, data on Mendel's life and work are remarkably sparse, compared to what we know about some of his contemporaries such as, for example, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) or Louis Pasteur (1822-1895). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibsen's play A Public Enemy is set in a tranquil Norwegian coastal spa and tells the story of a doctor who discovers that the Baths, on which the livelihood of the town depends, are contaminated because the water conduit system has been too economically designed. A brief summary of the play was already given in Chapter 6. Stockmann analyses the bathing and the drinking water, sends samples to university experts who have the right equipment at their disposal, and concludes that the local bath facilities, about to be visited by health-seekers and tourists, are petrified by animalculae or infusoria - living beings that can only be detected with the help of a microscope. Convinced that he is about to avert a major public disaster he alerts both town officials and journalists (simultaneously). He regards it as his duty to disclose his discovery to the authorities, notably his elderly brother, the conservative Mayor, who had offered him his present position, but also to the latter's opponents: the liberal press. Moreover, he regards himself as somewhat more than simply a medical officer or local physician. He is repeatedly referred to, both by himself as by others, as a "man of science", and devoted to the cause of scientific enlightenment and societal reform. Initially he is praised as a public benefactor who simply wants to avoid illness among tourists, but when the public learns that Stockmann's discovery might irreparably damage the town's reputation while necessary improvements of the Baths will greatly affect their income, they turn against him. The necessary repairs seem far beyond their means. Stockmann calls a public meeting but is prevented from delivering his speech and getting his message to the villagers due to a number of tactical manoeuvers by the more dexterous politicians present. This makes him decide to give a philosophical lecture instead, on the intellectual superiority of the elite in comparison to the unenlightened and prejudiced majority of mankind. As a result of this snobbish tirade by a "man of science" against popular opinion, the audience brands him as an enemy of the people, the target of a cordon sanitaire - as if he himself is exposed as an infectious agent. They stone his house and leave him "revelling in his position as a pariah" (Mehra 2001, p. 2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Genesis (1:9-10) it is stated that God gathered the waters into one place, in order to let the dry land appear, which He called earth, while the waters were called seas. In the Netherlands, this process took more than a single day, and it was the work of man. Gradually, a cultivated landscape emerged out of diffuse nature. In the course of centuries, the Dutch were increasingly effective in determining the conditions that allowed coastal and wetland nature to present itself in a more domesticated version. In this chapter, I will assess this process in terms of a moral geography. Different types of landscapes are read as manifestations (or materializations) of different moral attitudes towards nature, while concrete landscape interventions are interpreted as instances of moral criticism directed towards the activities and values of previous generations. In order to flesh out such a "moral geography", a comparative epistemological approach is taken. The moral profile of particular landscapes or of particular landscape interventions will be determined by means of a systematic confrontation of a variety of sources, notably scientific and literary ones. For it is in the instances of conflict and convergence of these various sources that the moral profile of a landscape emerges. The basic idea behind this chapter is that landscape types may be read as materializations of the moral ideas and values that guided their creation. I will regard the Dutch landscape as the outcome of a series of dramatic reversals in the interaction between man and nature. As I said, a "moral geography" of a landscape will interpret landscape modifications as forms of moral criticism directed towards the values, choices and achievements of previous generations. In this chapter, I will focus on the decisive highlights, the most dramatic shifts that gave the Dutch landscape its present appearance. Notably, I will reflect on the transitions that occurred during two decisive turning points in the history of the Netherlands, two "Golden Ages". The first Golden Age was the classical or early modern period, notably the seventeenth century. It will be discussed in Sections 7.3 and 7.4. This episode gave birth to the two most outstanding and enduring icons of the Dutch landscape: the windmill and the tulip. The second Golden Age roughly covers the period between 1880 and 1920. Like the first Golden Age, this episode produced a relatively large number of scientists and artists of renown. While the domestication of coastal and fluvial nature was more or less completed, a new and more "romantic" vision of nature emerged as a competing ideological force. This episode will be discussed in Sections 7.5-7.7. Finally, I will indicate how the new vision just mentioned resulted in the remarkable landscape modifications that are taking place now, at this very moment, and that seem to invert the changes that were brought about during the early modern period or "classical age" (Section 7.8). As was already indicated, these developments will be studied from the point of view of a comparative epistemology, that is, a synchronic analysis of scientific and literary sources on coastal and fluvial landscapes. But in order to set the stage and define the proper context for such a comparative approach, I will summarize (in Section 7.2) the history of the landscape in broad outline and in a more diachronic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibsen's play The Wild Duck was written and published in 1884. The initial response to it was one of bewilderment. It left the audience baffled and perplexed. Generations of critics continued to regard it as obscure, undefined, unfathomable, ambiguous, evasive -not in the least because of the mysterious symbol that held it together: an untamed bird in its close and miserable garret, captive to circumstances and with no hope of escape (Meyer 1985). In this chapter, I intend to re-read the play in a particular manner, namely as a document that records an important event in the history of human-animal interaction. The Wild Duck stages a new and unprecedented animal practice. If we read it in this manner, the play turns out to be remarkably coherent, and apparently futile details suddenly become important and meaningful. It is not my intention, however, to add yet another Ibsen interpretation to those already propounded. Rather, the purpose of this chapter is an epistemological one. I will emphasize that what is happening to Ibsen's duck on the stage, is remarkably similar to what is happening to some of its contemporaries in a new type of animal research, emerging precisely at that time, destined to become one of the most important forms of animal research of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lines quoted above come from Ivan Turgenev's famous novel Fathers and Sons, published in 1861, but describing a series of events set in the year 1859, when Charles Darwin published his scientific best-seller. As was indicated in Chapter 3, Darwin's Origin of Species entails a triumph of a realistic view on nature over the (then dominant) romantic view. The same tendency towards realism was omnipresent in Melville's whaling novel - notably in the relentless descriptions of the violence of whaling as an "animal practice" - and it is precisely this shift from romanticism to realism that is at the heart of Turgenev's novel as well. The book sets out to analyze a generation conflict. The "fathers", notably Nikolai Kirsanov and his brother Pavel, are the romanticists: Russian landlords who value art, culture, French and English novels, good manners, in short: an aesthetic and educated, but rather idle and melancholy lifestyle. In their youth, they visited the university, not in order to become physicians or scientists, but in order to be educated as "gentlemen". The new generation of the realists, however, is represented by Nikolai Kirsanov's son Arcady (a science student at the university of St. Petersburg), but especially by his friend Bazarov, a young and ambitious physician who is interested in natural science, notably physiology and chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As was indicated in Chapter 1, "comparative epistemology" developed against the backdrop of a number of developments and reversals in the history of philosophical thinking. As Kant (1781/1975) points out in his Introduction to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, at least two important turning points must be identified. Both begin with an epistemological crisis, a paralysing epistemological malaise, but eventually result in a scientific revolution, putting scientific inquiry on a completely new and promising footing. These "happy endings", however, presuppose significant "therapeutic interventions" in the form of thorough reconsiderations of the epistemological conditions for producing reliable knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book starts from the conviction, however, that there are other ways of knowing about nature besides science. At first glance, this may not seem all that controversial. It seems obvious, for example, that there is something like practical knowledge concerning nature, such as the uncodified, experiential knowledge of gardeners, sailors, wanderers or pet-owners. Someone who travels through a particular landscape on foot on a regular basis is likely to acquire a certain amount of knowledge about such a site. Another important form of knowledge concerning nature is the knowledge articulated by artists, such as poets, novelists, landscape painters or even composers. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) has written many poems on flowers that bear witness to his intimate knowledge of plant forms, although not everybody will regard his knowledge as being "scientific" in a strict sense. Stories by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), situated in the Russian countryside, with its endless birch forests and misty ponds, rely on his "firsthand knowledge" (Troyat 1985/1988) of landscapes, birds, mammals and trees, accumulated through years of careful observation and a close "reading" of rural environments. The German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) studied the sceneries that he paid tribute to in his paintings very carefully and thoroughly. One could say of his paintings, such as Riesengebirge [1835], for example, that there is "truth" in them, even "knowledge". And this even applies to music, so it seems. We can 4 1 Comparative Epistemology listen to Waldesrauschen [1862] by Franz Liszt, for example, as a fascinating and even bewildering play of notes and chords, but we may also appreciate it as a genuine effort to allow a recognisable forest experience to come to life. Or, to give yet another example, it is clear that Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), in his symphonic poem Finlandia as well as in various other works, succeeded in creating a truthful and convincing musical "image" of the Finish landscape. Apparently, he knew this landscape extremely well and this enabled him to really call it to life in his symphonic masterpieces. A poem by Goethe, a story by Turgenev, a painting by Friedrich or a musical score by Sibelius may tell us more about a particular flower or site than, for example, a botanical, geological or ecological publication in Nature or Science. Artists may allow nature to emerge, to come forward in a certain manner - and so does science. Neither the artistic nor the scientific rendering of nature can be regarded as a straightforward "representation". Rather, in all the cases mentioned, nature is experienced under certain conditions. Particular aspects of nature are revealed whereas others are neglected or even eclipsed. And to a certain extent we may say that the artist's nature really is different compared to the nature of (particular branches of ) scientific research. Until recently, however, epistemology as a philosophical discipline was almost exclusively devoted to reflecting on the structure and reliability of scientific knowledge. The objective of this book is to contribute to the emergence of a more comprehensive epistemology, one that is willing and able to critically reflect on the structure and reliability of other knowledge forms as well, in the context of a comparative epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]