The Form of Becoming

Embryology and the Epistemology of Rhythm, 17601830

By: Janina Wellmann, Kate Sturge (Translator)

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Hardcover | 4 April 2017

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Hardcover
424 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
22.8 x 15.2 x 3.18

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An examination of the constitutive role of rhythm and movement in the visualization of developing life.In The Form of Becoming Janina Wellmann offers an innovative understanding of the emergence around 1800 of the science of embryology and a new notion of development, one based on the epistemology of rhythm. She argues that between 1760 and 1830, the concept of rhythm became crucial to many fields of knowledge, including the study of life and living processes. She juxtaposes the history of rhythm in music theory, literary theory, and philosophy with the concurrent turn in biology toward understanding the living world in terms of rhythmic patterns, rhythmic movement, and rhythmic representations. Common to all these fields was their view of rhythm as a means of organizing time-and of ordering the development of organisms. With The Form of Becoming, Wellmann, a historian of science, has written the first systematic study of visualization in embryology. Embryological development circa 1800 was imagined through the pictorial technique of the series, still prevalent in the field today. Tracing the origins of the developmental series back to seventeenth-century instructional graphics for military maneuvers, dance, and craft work, The Form of Becoming reveals the constitutive role of rhythm and movement in the visualization of developing life.

Industry Reviews

At the core of Wellmann's analysis is not a description of beauty per se, but an observation about the limits of description when confronted with living systems, and the role of the observer's own creativity in defining methods of approach. Wellmann's meticulious survey through the landscape of thought between the years 1760-1830 explores a period when the central figures of the time, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, did not see such harsh distinctions between their poetic, philosophical, and scientific projects.

-BOMB magazine

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