Welcome to our first ELBOW Talk of the Season 2 by Professor (emeritus) Heikki Mikkeli (University of Helsinki). Abstract of the talk below.
Rethinking the Animal-Human Boundary in the Eighteenth Century: The Classification of the Great Apes
The discovery of previously unknown primates in Africa and Southeast Asia in the Enlightenment period raised the question of their place in Western taxonomical classifications. A lively debate arose about where the borderline between humans and animals should be located, especially in the case of the great apes, whose bodies and movements closely resembled human ones. Several sources were used to resolve this question: classical taxonomies, medieval folklore, fossil finds, travel accounts and new empirical observations of the animals we now know as gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans. From Edward Tyson’s ”Orang-Outang” (1699) to Carl von Linné (1735) and count de Buffon (1766), authors tried to reorganize scientific taxonomies and protect the dignity of humankind. At the same time, however, the great apes were often humanized in contemporary visual representations.
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- 19.2.2025 13:00
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- 19.2.2025 14:00
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