te Heesen A
Max-Planck-Institut fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin.
NTM. 2000;8(3):170-89.
The presentation of nature as part of natural history is usually connected with a natural cabinet or natural history museum. A closer look at travel and field work, however, shows that display of nature as a spatial concept and material conditions begins already in the first moment of collecting objects, specimens, and economic news about a region to be investigated. In the year 1720 the German physician Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt was sent to Siberia by the Tsar Peter I of Russia to explore this hithero terra incognita. During his travels Messerschmidt established two main instruments for collecting data and things, which I shall describe as organizing, material principles for his field work: written lists and notes, and boxes and cases. An analysis of these material objects and their specific uses reveals the intellectual and practical traditions in which learned activities and strategies took place in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
作为自然史一部分的自然展示通常与自然陈列室或自然历史博物馆相关联。然而，仔细审视旅行和实地考察工作就会发现，将自然作为一种空间概念和物质条件进行展示，在收集有关待考察地区的物品、标本及经济信息的最初阶段就已开始。1720年，德国医生丹尼尔·戈特利布·梅塞尔施密特受俄罗斯沙皇彼得一世派遣前往西伯利亚，探索这片此前未知的土地。在旅行期间，梅塞尔施密特确立了两种收集数据和物品的主要工具，我将其描述为他实地考察工作的组织性物质原则：书面清单和笔记，以及盒子和箱子。对这些物质对象及其具体用途的分析揭示了18世纪初学术活动和策略所发生的知识与实践传统。
