Peer-Reviewed Research Articles by Petter Hellström
Journal for the History of Knowledge, 2024
Over the course of the eighteenth century, European maps of Africa became increasingly empty. Riv... more Over the course of the eighteenth century, European maps of Africa became increasingly empty. Rivers and mountains, kingdoms and towns that had been mapped for centuries suddenly disappeared and were replaced by unmapped, blank spaces. Though historians have scrutinized the role of the blank spaces in creating and sustaining the perception of Africa’s interior as an unknown and unclaimed territory, the blanks themselves have long been understood as the bi-products of improved scientific standards. Geographers in the European Enlightenment, we have been told, cleared their maps of imaginary wonders, and drew a sharp line between the known and the unknown. This explanation for the continent’s unmapping is not, however, congruent with the empirical evidence. Though eighteenth-century geographers argued eloquently for the principled suppression of uncertain knowledge, they were no less at the mercy of conflicting reports than their predecessors had been. Leaving parts of a map blank to represent unexplored regions was similarly not their invention—it had long been a feature on maps of the New World. What was new about the blank spaces on eighteenth-century maps of Africa was not so much the blanks as such, as their application to a previously mapped part of the Old World.
Archives of Natural History, Oct 1, 2012
To speak of evolutionary trees and of the Tree of Life has become routine in evolution studies, d... more To speak of evolutionary trees and of the Tree of Life has become routine in evolution studies, despite recurrent objections. Because it is not immediately obvious why a tree is suited to represent evolutionary history – woodland trees do not have their buds in the present and their trunks in the past, for a start – the reason why trees make sense to us is historically and culturally, not scientifically, predicated. To account for the Tree of Life, simultaneously genealogical and cosmological, we must explore the particular context in which Darwin declared the natural order to be analogous to a pedigree, and in which he communicated this vision by recourse to a tree. The name he gave his tree reveals part of the story, as before Darwin's appropriation of it, the Tree of Life grew in Paradise at the heart of God's creation.
Archives of Natural History, Apr 1, 2011
As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, t... more As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, the first contemporary artwork to win a permanent place in the Museum. While the artist claimed that the inspiration for TREE came from Darwin's famous notebook sketch of branching evolution, sometimes referred to as his “tree of life” drawing, this article emphasises the apparent incongruity between Darwin's sketch and the artist's design – best explained by other, complementary sources of inspiration. In the context of the Museum's active participation in struggles over science and religion, the effect of the new artwork is contradictory. TREE celebrates Darwinian evolutionism, but it resonates with deep-rooted, mythological traditions of tree symbolism to do so. This complicates the status of the Museum space as one of disinterested, secular science, but it also contributes, with or without the intentions of the Museum's management, to consolidate two sometimes conflicting strains within the Museum's history. TREE celebrates human effort, secular science and reason – but it also evokes long-standing mythological traditions to inspire reverence and remind us of our humble place in this world.
Archives of Natural History, Apr 1, 2017
Augustin Augier’s "Arbre botanique" ("botanical tree") (1801), a diagram representing the natural... more Augustin Augier’s "Arbre botanique" ("botanical tree") (1801), a diagram representing the natural order of plants in the shape of a family tree, is today a standard reference in histories of systematics and phylogenetic trees. The previously unidentified author was a nobleman from Saint-Tropez, a schoolteacher and a priest in the Société de l'Oratoire de Jésus et de Marie immaculeé. His biography and two previously unnoticed publications, as well as his correspondence with the Institut national in Paris, are discussed. Knowledge of Augier's identity, his life and works sheds new light upon his taxonomic theories, and helps us to understand his "Arbre botanique". Long before the tree was made into an icon of evolutionism, Augier used it to demonstrate the beauty and perfect order of divine creation.
Huntia. A Journal of Botanical History, 2017
Augustin Augier's "Arbre botanique" (1801) is one of the earliest known family tree diagrams to r... more Augustin Augier's "Arbre botanique" (1801) is one of the earliest known family tree diagrams to represent the natural system. As such it is frequently cited in the literature on historical systematics, where it is generally framed as a precursor to later, evolutionary trees. While ignorance concerning the author’s identity long complicated efforts at interpreting and placing his tree into context, in the course of our recent establishment of Augier’s biography, we discovered two previously unknown writings in which Augier discussed the Botanical Tree: a letter he sent to the National Institute in Paris in 1801 and a serialized article he published in Valence in 1809. These texts shed considerable light on how its author intended the Botanical Tree to be used and help to clarify how genealogical metaphors could serve as classificatory resources before the rise of evolutionary theory — and from within an explicitly religious worldview.
Dissertation by Petter Hellström
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsalienses, 2019
This study investigates early employments of family trees in the modern sciences, in order to his... more This study investigates early employments of family trees in the modern sciences, in order to historicise their iconic status and now established uses, notably in evolutionary biology and linguistics. Moving beyond disciplinary accounts to consider the wider cultural background, it examines how early uses within the sciences transformed family trees as a format of visual representation, as well as the meanings invested in them.
Historical writing about trees in the modern sciences is heavily tilted towards evolutionary biology, especially the iconic diagrams associated with Darwinism. Trees of Knowledge shifts the focus to France in the wake of the Revolution, when family trees were first put to use in a number of disparate academic fields. Through three case studies drawn from across the disciplines, it investigates the simultaneous appearance of trees in natural history, language studies, and music theory. Augustin Augier’s tree of plant families, Félix Gallet’s family tree of dead and living languages, and Henri Montan Berton’s family tree of chords served diverse ends, yet all exploited the familiar shape of genealogy.
While outlining how genealogical trees once constituted a more general resource in scholarly knowledge production—employed primarily as pedagogical tools—this study argues that family trees entered the modern sciences independently of the evolutionary theories they were later made to illustrate. The trees from post-revolutionary France occasionally charted development over time, yet more often they served to visualise organic hierarchy and perfect order. In bringing this neglected history to light, Trees of Knowledge provides not only a rich account of the rise of tree thinking in the modern sciences, but also a pragmatic methodology for approaching the dynamic interplay of metaphor, visual representation, and knowledge production in the history of science.
Lychnos. Annual of the Swedish History of Science Society, 2019
Petter Hellström's Trees of Knowledge: Science and the Shape of Knowledge is a highly original, d... more Petter Hellström's Trees of Knowledge: Science and the Shape of Knowledge is a highly original, deeply researched, elegantly written contribution to the history of science. It succeeds as both an empirical history and theoretical intervention. It tells a detailed history of the origins and uses of both the image and metaphor of genealogical trees in the early nineteenth century in France—in natural history, linguistics, and music.
Historisk tidskrift, 2020
Svenska Linnésällskapets Årsskrift, 2019
Från de första encelliga djuren reser sig livets träd, förgrenar sig från stammen i allt smalare ... more Från de första encelliga djuren reser sig livets träd, förgrenar sig från stammen i allt smalare kvistar och skott till de nu levande livsformerna i trädkronans tak. Inom vetenskapen, särskilt i evolutionsbiologi och språkhistoria, förekommer inte sällan träd som metafor, diagram och beskrivning av de levande organismernas eller de mänskliga språkens utveckling.
Books & Reports by Petter Hellström
Family trees have become so fundamental to the way we think about evolution that we barely notice... more Family trees have become so fundamental to the way we think about evolution that we barely notice them. Still their introduction into modern science preceded the rise of evolutionary theory, and had nothing to do with it. Through detailed examination of largely neglected family tree diagrams from the early nineteenth century, Trees of Knowledge investigates how scholars in post-revolutionary France appropriated the visual rhetoric of genealogy. The significance of the place and time can hardly be overstated: the French Revolution had just brought an end to the old regime of inherited privileges. In the final decade of the eighteenth century, revolutionaries were literally burning genealogical records, including family trees. In the first decade of the next, scholars across a range of disciplines rediscovered the shape of genealogy as the principle of natural order.
Trees of Knowledge is the first study to investigate this paradoxical development. An ambitious study of the interplay between scientific images and the scientific imagination, it fundamentally rethinks the place of tree diagrams and genealogical metaphors in the history of science.
Den 1 oktober 2020 inrättade rektor Ole Petter Ottersen en arbetsgrupp med uppdrag att utreda "me... more Den 1 oktober 2020 inrättade rektor Ole Petter Ottersen en arbetsgrupp med uppdrag att utreda "medicinhistoriska och etiska aspekter på historiska minnesmärken och samlingar" vid Karolinska Institutet (KI). Gruppen leds av professor Gert Helgesson. Enligt rektors instruktioner ska arbetet ske i två etapper, varav den första ska behandla "historiska minnesmärken, namngivning av vägar, salar etc. med koppling till historiska personer vid KI med vad vi idag uppfattar som etiska förhållningssätt". Syftet med här föreliggande promemoria är dels att inventera befintliga namn och teckna en översikt över namngivningens historia vid KI – att utreda när, hur och varför KI:s miljöer har namngivits på det sätt som har skett – dels att identifiera och i viss mån utreda namn med kopplingar till rasforskning och andra former av rasism. Till denna översikt och utredning fogas inventeringar över namngivna fysiska miljöer vid KI liksom över de personer som fått ge namn åt dessa miljöer (se bilagorna 1 respektive 2).
Stockholm: Swedish History Museum, 2015
Sverige i tiden är en bok om Sveriges historia. Boken berättar om vikingar och hjältekungar, fika... more Sverige i tiden är en bok om Sveriges historia. Boken berättar om vikingar och hjältekungar, fika och folkmusik – saker som ofta uppfattas som typiskt svenska.
Men till skillnad från många andra historieböcker så tar den här avstamp i den senaste forskningen, inte i de nationalromantiska idéer som fortfarande påverkar historierna om Sverige och det svenska. Författarna visar på det komplexa och mångskiftande i historien, men också på hur historieskrivningen i alla tider har formats och brukats för olika syften. Så är det även idag. Det finns en stark koppling mellan synen på Sveriges historia och synen på dagens Sverige, på vad som räknas som kulturarv i Sverige och på vem som får känna sig svensk.
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
Book Chapters by Petter Hellström
Shadow of the Tree, 2023
In 1807 or shortly thereafter, the celebrated composer and professor of musical harmony Henri Mon... more In 1807 or shortly thereafter, the celebrated composer and professor of musical harmony Henri Montan Berton (1767–1844) published an engraved broadsheet entitled "Arbre généalogique des accords" (Genealogical Tree of Chords). A second edition appeared in 1815. While in the modern sciences, we have come to associate tree diagrams – especially family tree diagrams – with evolutionary biology and linguistics, Berton’s "genealogical tree" was drawn to represent "the great family of Chords."
Secord in Transit. A Natural History of this Most Extraordinary Human as Told by Witnesses and Secretly Collected by the Editors, 2022
To say that someone "cannot see the wood for the trees" is a long-established proverb in English.... more To say that someone "cannot see the wood for the trees" is a long-established proverb in English. It appears to have been around already in 1533, when Thomas More included it in the second part of his Confutacion of Tyndals Answere (London: Rastell, 1533) to build his case against Robert Barnes, a Cambridge doctor and religious reformer whom More considered a heretic.
Sverige i tiden. Historier om ett levande land, ed. Lotta Fernstål, Petter Hellström, Magnus Minnbergh and Fredrik Svanberg, Jun 2015
Den 30 november 2012, på Karl XII:s dödsdag, kom en grupp ryska nazister till Stockholm. Tillsamm... more Den 30 november 2012, på Karl XII:s dödsdag, kom en grupp ryska nazister till Stockholm. Tillsammans med svenska nazister marscherade de från Karl XII:s staty i Kungsträdgården till hans gravplats i Riddarholms-kyrkan. I ett pressmeddelande förklarade de ryska nazisterna sitt deltagande med att det var dags "att glömma bort historiska tvister och oförrätter" mellan Sverige och Ryssland och istället förenas i kampen mot den gemensamma fienden: islam. Enligt dessa ryska nazister var Karl XII just den typ av "nationalistledare" som skulle leda kampen mot muslimerna och på så sätt rädda "den vita rasen" från undergång.
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
Sverige i tiden. Historier om ett levande land, ed. Lotta Fernstål, Petter Hellström, Magnus Minnbergh and Fredrik Svanberg, Jun 2015
Det här är en bok om Sveriges historia. Den tar upp fenomen som ofta har setts som typiskt svensk... more Det här är en bok om Sveriges historia. Den tar upp fenomen som ofta har setts som typiskt svenska, som vikingar och hjältekungar, fika och folkmusik. Men till skillnad från många andra böcker om Sveriges historia så behandlar vi dessa fenomen med avstamp i den senaste forskningen, inte i de nationalromantiska idéer som länge har fått forma historieskrivningen om Sverige och det svenska. Bokens kapitel har skrivits av forskare och författare, var och en utvald för sitt kun- nande inom det berörda området.
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
Det förborgade ordet. Texter om mystisk erfarenhet, red. Dan N. Andersson & Daniel Westerlund, 2006
Essays, Reviews & Essay Reviews by Petter Hellström
Lychnos: Annual of the Swedish History of Science Society, Jan 2016
In 1933, Arthur Lovejoy gave a series of lectures at Harvard University; they were later edited a... more In 1933, Arthur Lovejoy gave a series of lectures at Harvard University; they were later edited and published in 1936 as The Great Chain of Being. Lovejoy was trained in and a professor of philosophy, and the lecture series was presented in honour of the late professor of philosophy William James. Yet in his lectures Lovejoy ventured out of the classical philosophical territory to bring together histories that had previously been told in separate contexts; his examples ranged from philosophy and theology to poetry and the natural sciences. “Many separate parts of the history have, indeed, been told before”, Lovejoy conceded; however, rather than novelty it was “their relation to a single pervasive complex of ideas – and thereby, often, to one another – that still seems to need to be set forth”.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44, Sep 2013
Proceeding from Abu El-Haj’s historiography of scientific investments in Jewish biological differ... more Proceeding from Abu El-Haj’s historiography of scientific investments in Jewish biological difference, and her outline of the contemporary research field known as “Jewish genetic history”, this essay review highlights four issues of wider concern. First, the powerful interplay of scientific and extra-scientific narratives in contemporary genetic/genealogical science. Second, the epistemological consequences of thinking inheritance in trees and lineages. Third, the limits of self-study in a comparative science such as human population genetics. And fourth, the longevity of the “Jewish question”, which continues to motivate the field.
FREE DOWNLOAD: To download a free full text copy of the article from Taylor and Francis Online, v... more FREE DOWNLOAD: To download a free full text copy of the article from Taylor and Francis Online, visit http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W8rUjKfI8cvFVaEYHCR5/full
ABSTRACT: The historical importance of teleology and purposeful design as an ontological framework within which to explain the ‘admirable adaptation’ of living beings to their living conditions, and the gradual replacement of this framework with the modern, evolutionary framework, using family history and competition for genetic survival as key explanatory resources, is the theme of Marco Solinas’s latest book, an ambitious and forceful argument for the importance of apparently useless adaptations in provoking this development.
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Peer-Reviewed Research Articles by Petter Hellström
Dissertation by Petter Hellström
Historical writing about trees in the modern sciences is heavily tilted towards evolutionary biology, especially the iconic diagrams associated with Darwinism. Trees of Knowledge shifts the focus to France in the wake of the Revolution, when family trees were first put to use in a number of disparate academic fields. Through three case studies drawn from across the disciplines, it investigates the simultaneous appearance of trees in natural history, language studies, and music theory. Augustin Augier’s tree of plant families, Félix Gallet’s family tree of dead and living languages, and Henri Montan Berton’s family tree of chords served diverse ends, yet all exploited the familiar shape of genealogy.
While outlining how genealogical trees once constituted a more general resource in scholarly knowledge production—employed primarily as pedagogical tools—this study argues that family trees entered the modern sciences independently of the evolutionary theories they were later made to illustrate. The trees from post-revolutionary France occasionally charted development over time, yet more often they served to visualise organic hierarchy and perfect order. In bringing this neglected history to light, Trees of Knowledge provides not only a rich account of the rise of tree thinking in the modern sciences, but also a pragmatic methodology for approaching the dynamic interplay of metaphor, visual representation, and knowledge production in the history of science.
Books & Reports by Petter Hellström
Trees of Knowledge is the first study to investigate this paradoxical development. An ambitious study of the interplay between scientific images and the scientific imagination, it fundamentally rethinks the place of tree diagrams and genealogical metaphors in the history of science.
Men till skillnad från många andra historieböcker så tar den här avstamp i den senaste forskningen, inte i de nationalromantiska idéer som fortfarande påverkar historierna om Sverige och det svenska. Författarna visar på det komplexa och mångskiftande i historien, men också på hur historieskrivningen i alla tider har formats och brukats för olika syften. Så är det även idag. Det finns en stark koppling mellan synen på Sveriges historia och synen på dagens Sverige, på vad som räknas som kulturarv i Sverige och på vem som får känna sig svensk.
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
Book Chapters by Petter Hellström
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
Essays, Reviews & Essay Reviews by Petter Hellström
ABSTRACT: The historical importance of teleology and purposeful design as an ontological framework within which to explain the ‘admirable adaptation’ of living beings to their living conditions, and the gradual replacement of this framework with the modern, evolutionary framework, using family history and competition for genetic survival as key explanatory resources, is the theme of Marco Solinas’s latest book, an ambitious and forceful argument for the importance of apparently useless adaptations in provoking this development.
Historical writing about trees in the modern sciences is heavily tilted towards evolutionary biology, especially the iconic diagrams associated with Darwinism. Trees of Knowledge shifts the focus to France in the wake of the Revolution, when family trees were first put to use in a number of disparate academic fields. Through three case studies drawn from across the disciplines, it investigates the simultaneous appearance of trees in natural history, language studies, and music theory. Augustin Augier’s tree of plant families, Félix Gallet’s family tree of dead and living languages, and Henri Montan Berton’s family tree of chords served diverse ends, yet all exploited the familiar shape of genealogy.
While outlining how genealogical trees once constituted a more general resource in scholarly knowledge production—employed primarily as pedagogical tools—this study argues that family trees entered the modern sciences independently of the evolutionary theories they were later made to illustrate. The trees from post-revolutionary France occasionally charted development over time, yet more often they served to visualise organic hierarchy and perfect order. In bringing this neglected history to light, Trees of Knowledge provides not only a rich account of the rise of tree thinking in the modern sciences, but also a pragmatic methodology for approaching the dynamic interplay of metaphor, visual representation, and knowledge production in the history of science.
Trees of Knowledge is the first study to investigate this paradoxical development. An ambitious study of the interplay between scientific images and the scientific imagination, it fundamentally rethinks the place of tree diagrams and genealogical metaphors in the history of science.
Men till skillnad från många andra historieböcker så tar den här avstamp i den senaste forskningen, inte i de nationalromantiska idéer som fortfarande påverkar historierna om Sverige och det svenska. Författarna visar på det komplexa och mångskiftande i historien, men också på hur historieskrivningen i alla tider har formats och brukats för olika syften. Så är det även idag. Det finns en stark koppling mellan synen på Sveriges historia och synen på dagens Sverige, på vad som räknas som kulturarv i Sverige och på vem som får känna sig svensk.
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
OPEN ACCESS: https://historiska.se/forskning/bocker-och-rapporter/boken-sverige-i-tiden/
ABSTRACT: The historical importance of teleology and purposeful design as an ontological framework within which to explain the ‘admirable adaptation’ of living beings to their living conditions, and the gradual replacement of this framework with the modern, evolutionary framework, using family history and competition for genetic survival as key explanatory resources, is the theme of Marco Solinas’s latest book, an ambitious and forceful argument for the importance of apparently useless adaptations in provoking this development.
Read the full article at https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/aug/22/not-on-the-map-cartographic-omission-history
Read the full article at https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/apr/19/the-tree-of-life-with-darwin-from-genesis-to-genomics
I Kampen om den heliga jorden går Lars Gösta och Nils Pe Hellström igenom det som kommit att kallas Mellanösternkonflikten eller Israel-Palestinakonflikten, från det Heliga landets tidiga historia och fram till den andra Intifadan under tidigt 2000-tal.
Idé- och lärdomshistoria grundades som ämne av Johan Nordström i Uppsala år 1933 och har kommit att innefatta många perspektiv och inriktningar genom åren. Vi vänder oss både till doktorander inom just idéhistoria och de som känner att deras avhandlingsprojekt faller inom
den idéhistoriska sfären, t ex filosofisk historia, medicinhistoria, STS, kulturhistoria och vetenskapshistoria. Under den här dagen kommer vi fokusera på en aspekt av många, nämligen materialitet. Detta ska också ses som ett ypperligt tillfälle att träffa varandra över institutionsgränserna.