Synopses & Reviews
Pictures from the past powerfully shape current views of the world. In books, television programs, and websites, new images appear alongside others that have survived from decades ago. Among the most famous are drawings of embryos by the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in which humans and other vertebrates begin identical, then diverge toward their adult forms. But these icons of evolution are notorious, too: soon after their publication in 1868, a colleague alleged fraud, and Haeckeland#8217;s many enemies have repeated the charge ever since. His embryos nevertheless became a textbook staple until, in 1997, a biologist accused him again, and creationist advocates of intelligent design forced his figures out. How could the most controversial pictures in the history of science have become some of the most widely seen?
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In Haeckeland#8217;s Embryos, Nick Hopwood tells this extraordinary story in full for the first time. He tracks the drawings and the charges against them from their genesis in the nineteenth century to their continuing involvement in innovation in the present day, and from Germany to Britain and the United States. Emphasizing the changes worked by circulation and copying, interpretation and debate, Hopwood uses the case to explore how pictures succeed and fail, gain acceptance and spark controversy. Along the way, he reveals how embryonic development was made a process that we can see, compare, and discuss, and how copyingand#151;usually dismissed as unoriginaland#151;can be creative, contested, and consequential.
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With a wealth of expertly contextualized illustrations, Haeckeland#8217;s Embryos recaptures the shocking novelty of pictures that enthralled schoolchildren and outraged priests, and highlights the remarkable ways these images kept on shaping knowledge as they aged.
Review
[F]ascinating...exploring how and why we like things, how we subliminally come to recognize them, and why an image or object or idea achieves longevity." --ARTnews
"Recommended for all those interested in iconography, art history, advertising, and branding." - Library Journal
Review
"This book masterfully reconstructs the controversies surrounding Ernst Haeckeland#8217;s infamous diagrams comparing the embryos of different species. Hopwoodand#8217;s powerful and compelling narrative reveals how these images became enmeshed in fundamental questions about visual representation, scientific fraud, relations between science and religion, and interactions between scientists and their publics. Haeckeland#8217;s Embryos is a transformative study of scientific controversy that should be required reading for every student of science.and#8221;
Review
Ernst Haeckel, the best known German Darwinist of his day, was also the most controversial. For nearly a century and a half his widely circulated series of animal and human embryos, illustrating common descent, have prompted charges of forgery and fraud from scientific, religious, and political critics. Antievolutionists, especially advocates of intelligent design, have been among his most outspoken detractors. One can only hope that Nick Hopwoodand#8217;s scrupulously researched and evenhandedly argued book will finally lay these longstanding controversies to rest.
Review
Nick Hopwood has written a meticulous and engaging history that sets a high bar for future print and visual culture studies. Haeckeland#8217;s Embryos shows the material, intellectual, and cultural conditions under which the hidden is rendered visible and the visible rendered standard, amidst contestation at every turn. Open it, andand#8212;after you have recovered from its spectacular imagesand#8212;read it, for this is history of science at its best.
Review
Certain images in science capture the imagination and take on a life of their own. In this excellent book, surely the definitive account of the afterlife of scientific images, Nick Hopwood examines the most iconic pictures of vertebrate embryos, those first produced by German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel in 1868. These images have been repeatedly caught up in anti-Darwinist debates and to this day have been subject to charges of scientific fraud. In tracking Haeckeland#8217;s embryos, Hopwood restores the full sound and fury of history to the act of looking at what humans are and where we came from.
Review
andquot;Hopwood raises important questions (particularly pertinent to the modern era of viral memes) about the teaching of empirical science and the bringing of complex scientific ideas to the public, the and#39;boundary of popular literature and specialist work,and#39; the relationship between the observer as accurate reporter and as artist, and the line beyond which schematization for didactic or rhetorical effect becomes deliberately misleading.andquot;
Review
andquot;Detailed, well documented, and rich with illustrations. It is likely to be of most value to those with interests in developmental biology, embryology, the history of attacks on evolution, or the history of scientific publication.andquot;
Review
andquot;Rarely have images proved so incendiary as the embryo drawings of nineteenth-century experimental zoologist Ernst Haeckel. In this lavishly illustrated volume, Nick Hopwood traces the chequered history of the sketches, which showed similarities between embryos of higher and lower vertebrates, including humans, at particular points in their development. Haeckel intended the images as support for Charles Darwinand#39;s evolutionary theory, but under attack revealed that they were schematics. Hopwood meticulously charts how, despite the controversy, the drawings took on a life of their own.andquot;
Review
andquot;Sumptuous. . . . Hopwoodand#39;s excellent, thought-provoking book makes us ponder how these erroneous illustrations acquired their iconic status, and, above all, it shines a spotlight on the power of drawings to influence our thinking.andquot;
Synopsis
How does an image become iconic? In
Christ to Coke, eminent art historian Martin Kemp offers a highly original look at the main types of visual icons. Lavishly illustrated with 165 color images, this marvelous work illuminates eleven universally recognized images, both historical and contemporary, to see how they arose and how they continue to function in our culture.
Kemp begins with the stock image of Christ's face, the founding icon--literally, since he was the central subject of early Christian icons. Some of the icons that follow are general, like the cross, the lion, and the heart-shape (as in "I heart New York"). Some are specific, such as the Mona Lisa, Che Guevara, and the famous photograph of the napalmed girl in Vietnam. Other modern icons come from politics, such as the American flag (the "Stars and Stripes"), from business, led by the Coca-Cola bottle, and from science, most notably the double helix of DNA and Einstein's famous equation E=mc2.
The stories of these icons--researched using the skills of a leading visual historian--are told in a vivid and personal manner. Some are funny; some are deeply moving; some are highly improbable; some center on popular fame; others are based on the most profound ideas in science. The diversity is extraordinary. Along the way, we encounter the often weird and wonderful ways that these images adapt to an astonishing variety of ways and contexts.
Informative, amusing, and surprising by turns, Christ to Coke will entertain and intrigue readers with the narratives that Martin Kemp skillfully weaves around these famous images.
About the Author
Nick Hopwood is reader in history of science and medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Embryos in Wax, coeditor of Models: The Third Dimension of Science, and cocurator of the online exhibition Making Visible Embryos.
Table of Contents
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Icons of Knowledge
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Two Small Embryos in Spirits of Wine
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Like Flies on the Parlor Ceiling
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Drawing and Darwinism
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Illustrating the Magic Word
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Professors and Progress
7and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Visual Strategies
8and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Schematics, Forgery, and the So-Called Educated
9and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Imperial Grids
10and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Setting Standards
11and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Forbidden Fruit
12and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Creative Copying
13and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Trials and Tributes
14and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Scandal for the People
15and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; A Hundred Haeckels
16and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Textbook Illustration
17and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Iconoclasm
18and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Shock of the Copy
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Works Cited
Index
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