Volume 44, April 2014, Pages 31–43
Wild men in and out of science: finding a place in the disciplinary borderlands of Arctic Canada and Greenland
Highlights
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- Comparative case study of constructions of knowledge in early twentieth-century field science.
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- Features Canadian naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton and Danish geologist Lauge Koch.
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- Contextualizes disciplinary borderlands in Arctic Canada and Greenland.
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- Focuses on status of field science in an age dominated by laboratory methods.
Abstract
This
essay compares the early twentieth-century Arctic experiences of the
artist-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (1860–1946) in Canada and the
explorer-geologist Lauge Koch (1892–1964) in Greenland during a time of
transition in the history of scientific exploration. It focuses on the
extraordinary careers of two uneasy contributors to this transition,
from both inside and outside of the scientific profession. Seton's and
Koch's careers serve as fault-lines marking important disputes over the
production and construction of knowledge, and conceptions of scientific
truth. Seton, internationally famous author of the ‘realistic’ animal
stories Wild Animals I Have Known (1898), endured public criticism as a
‘nature-faker’ who anthropomorphized his animal subjects unduly. Intent
on earning recognition as a modern field scientist, he travelled to
Canada's Barren Grounds in 1907 to stake new claims to scientific
knowledge and field methods. Koch joined the legendary Arctic explorer
Knud Rasmussen's Second Thule Expedition (1916–1918) before leading
Denmark's Jubilee expedition to North Greenland (1920–1923). He returned
to Denmark a national hero whose further expeditions during the 1930s
transformed Arctic geological fieldwork, but not without very public
challenges from the Danish scientific community. The problems
encountered by Seton and Koch in their efforts to establish their field
practices in the disciplinary borderlands between traditional natural
history and modern ecology and geology, respectively, offer insights,
over several generations, into the historical transition from the older
Romantic lore of the heroic individual explorer to modern
infrastructures and practices. Their responses highlight larger fissures
in twentieth-century reconceptions of the Arctic, of nature, and of
science at large.
Keywords
- Arctic;
- Science;
- Canada;
- Greenland;
- Seton;
- Koch
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