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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.

Before trees and genealogy were associated with evolutionary science in the second half of the 19th century, family trees were used across a wider scholarly spectrum. This chapter gives a brief introduction to the history of family trees as employed in music theory.

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).

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.

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.

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 immaculée. 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.

An emotional debate has erupted over the absence of Palestine on Google Maps. But why does it matter whether Palestinians are on the map? Historian of science Petter Hellström looks at maps of the colonial era for clues.