Social Science Research Council

"The Secret of Images: Scientific Illustrations and Intellectual Property in Early Modern Netherlands"

My research focuses on how early 18th-century Dutch anatomists, microscopists and engineers used the form of illustrated publications to advertise and promote their scientific products in a growing international market. I investigate how the publication strategies of these practitioners were driven by sheer commercial interest, and not by a strong commitment to the idea of open, public science. In particular, I argue that Dutch practitioners only published information on the commercially available end products of their scientific investigations, but never discussed openly the production processes that led to their creation. Secondly, I claim that the market for these end products consisted mostly of educated, artistically-inclined and wealthy scientific virtuosi, and the end products were therefore represented in volumes embellished with decorative illustrations shaped according to the conventions of contemporary Dutch painting.

My research focuses on six scientific practitioners from early 18th-century Netherlands, some of the most important figures of Dutch science in the period: anatomists Frederik Ruysch, Govard Bidloo and Bernhard Siegfried Albinus; the natural historian Albertus Seba; the microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek; and the shipbuilding expert Nicolaas Witsen. Their work was concerned with the production of material objects (mummified cadavers, prepared natural historical specimens, scientific instruments, anatomical atlases and ships) for which there was clear demand on the scientific markets of early modern Europe. Their international clientele ranged from the British natural historian Hans Sloane, founder of the British Museum, to the Russian tzar Peter the Great. While my study stretches from microscopy to the early modern big science of shipbuilding, I claim that only such a wide-ranging survey allows us to measure the full impact of commercialization on early modern Dutch science.