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SUMMARY:Meeting nature halfway: Georg Forster\, mining\, and the aesthetic
 s of artifice - Patrick Anthony (Vanderbilt University)
DTSTART:20190311T130000Z
DTEND:20190311T140000Z
UID:TALK117733@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Laura Brassington
DESCRIPTION:In 1784\, Georg Forster travelled through mining-landscapes in
  Germany's Harz and Ore Mountains. There he encountered 'a new and rejuven
 ated Nature'. Steeped in the teachings of the mining elites who guided him
 \, Forster came to see water-\, horse- and man-powered industry as a noble
  human effort to participate in the 'workshop of Nature'. His journals osc
 illate between hubris and humility: keenly aware of the awesome power of n
 ature evidenced by mine collapses\, Forster understood mining as a project
  of 'fitting'\, even 'completing'\, natural landscapes. Following Forster'
 s journey\, this talk elucidates the unfamiliar sentimental world of late-
 18th-century resource extraction\, which beguiles two dichotomous historio
 graphical traditions. While some scholars describe the extractive ethos of
  Forster's generation as a wholesale 'oeconomization of nature'\, another 
 tradition identifies the turn of the 19th century\, with its embrace of ho
 lism\, as a wellspring of ecological thinking. Indeed\, the curious nature
  of this moment is captured by the fact that so many romantic figures part
 icipated in Germany's mining industry – from poets like Johann Wolfgang 
 von Goethe and Friedrich von Hardenberg ('Novalis') to savants like Henrik
  Steffens and Alexander von Humboldt. Forster\, to whom Humboldt attribute
 d his own holism\, helps us dwell in the alterity of a worldview whereby h
 uman dominion _over_ nature was to be 'shared _with_ nature'. To that end\
 , this talk grounds the lofty aesthetic meditations of Forster and his con
 temporaries in the 'working world' of mining\, specifically in the hydraul
 ic systems (dams\, aqueducts\, pumps and hydro-powered ore presses) that e
 pitomized their philosophy of nature.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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