Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text
Abstract The Anatomai , a lost work written by Aristotle, must have contained a collection of various drawings and figures of species as well as their organs. In his texts (mainly the Historia animalium ), Aristotle is often referring to the drawings after the description of species. Our study appli...
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crspringernat:10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6 2023-05-15T16:08:49+02:00 Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text Fürst von Lieven, Alexander Humar, Marcel Scholtz, Gerhard Freie Universität Berlin 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6 https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6/fulltext.html en eng Springer Science and Business Media LLC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Theory in Biosciences volume 140, issue 1, page 1-15 ISSN 1431-7613 1611-7530 Applied Mathematics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Statistics and Probability journal-article 2020 crspringernat https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6 2022-01-04T12:36:02Z Abstract The Anatomai , a lost work written by Aristotle, must have contained a collection of various drawings and figures of species as well as their organs. In his texts (mainly the Historia animalium ), Aristotle is often referring to the drawings after the description of species. Our study applies the method of the comparative view (‘Vergleichendes Sehen’) to provide an access to and reconstruction of Aristotle’s lost illustrations based on his textual descriptions. As an example, we chose the treatment of the European lobster ( Homarus gammarus L., 1758) in the Aristotelian corpus as a case study. First, we analyse the etymology of the Greek term astakós referring to the lobster and provide an overview on the putative synonyms. Second, we confront the textual basis of the description with several questions concerning the degree of abstraction, the relation between text and image, and the spatial orientation of the image. Finally, we present a step-by-step reconstruction of Aristotle’s illustrations of the lobster based on the various passages dealing with its anatomy in the text of the Historia animalium . The problems which arise by a confrontation of the textual basis with hypothetical images are discussed at a more general level. We conclude that this kind of a text-based image reconstruction is only possible if the object described by Aristotle is unambiguously identifiable and still visually accessible. Article in Journal/Newspaper European lobster Homarus gammarus Springer Nature (via Crossref) Theory in Biosciences 140 1 1 15 |
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Springer Nature (via Crossref) |
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English |
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Applied Mathematics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Statistics and Probability |
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Applied Mathematics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Statistics and Probability Fürst von Lieven, Alexander Humar, Marcel Scholtz, Gerhard Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
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Applied Mathematics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Statistics and Probability |
description |
Abstract The Anatomai , a lost work written by Aristotle, must have contained a collection of various drawings and figures of species as well as their organs. In his texts (mainly the Historia animalium ), Aristotle is often referring to the drawings after the description of species. Our study applies the method of the comparative view (‘Vergleichendes Sehen’) to provide an access to and reconstruction of Aristotle’s lost illustrations based on his textual descriptions. As an example, we chose the treatment of the European lobster ( Homarus gammarus L., 1758) in the Aristotelian corpus as a case study. First, we analyse the etymology of the Greek term astakós referring to the lobster and provide an overview on the putative synonyms. Second, we confront the textual basis of the description with several questions concerning the degree of abstraction, the relation between text and image, and the spatial orientation of the image. Finally, we present a step-by-step reconstruction of Aristotle’s illustrations of the lobster based on the various passages dealing with its anatomy in the text of the Historia animalium . The problems which arise by a confrontation of the textual basis with hypothetical images are discussed at a more general level. We conclude that this kind of a text-based image reconstruction is only possible if the object described by Aristotle is unambiguously identifiable and still visually accessible. |
author2 |
Freie Universität Berlin |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Fürst von Lieven, Alexander Humar, Marcel Scholtz, Gerhard |
author_facet |
Fürst von Lieven, Alexander Humar, Marcel Scholtz, Gerhard |
author_sort |
Fürst von Lieven, Alexander |
title |
Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
title_short |
Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
title_full |
Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
title_fullStr |
Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
title_full_unstemmed |
Aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
title_sort |
aristotle’s lobster: the image in the text |
publisher |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6 https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6/fulltext.html |
genre |
European lobster Homarus gammarus |
genre_facet |
European lobster Homarus gammarus |
op_source |
Theory in Biosciences volume 140, issue 1, page 1-15 ISSN 1431-7613 1611-7530 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-020-00322-6 |
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Theory in Biosciences |
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140 |
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1 |
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1 |
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15 |
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1766404836919607296 |