exit

Social Sciences and Humanities   > Home   > Art and Science   > Issue

Vol 7 - Issue 2

Art and Science


List of Articles

On Antoine Risso and his Histoire Naturelle des Principales Productions de l’Europe Méridionale et Particulièrement de Celles des Environs de Nice et des Alpes Maritimes

Antoine Risso (1777-1844) was a native and lifelong resident of Nice (France). He was a pharmacist by training and occupation, but became one of the foremost naturalists of his time. Risso published extensively on the flora, and particularly the marine fauna, of his native region. His ’magnum opus’ is an 1826 five volume work on the natural history of Nice and its region, treating geology, botany and zoology: Histoire Naturelle des Principales Productions de l’Europe Méridionale et Particulièrement de Celles des Environs de Nice et des Alpes Maritimes. The volumes included beautiful color plates, nearly all the work of Jean Gabriel Prêtre, one of the most reputable naturalist-painters of the first half of the 19th century. Risso’s Histoire Naturelle was greeted with considerable criticism when it appeared. However, today it can be said that it has passed the test of time. Of works published in 1826, Risso’s Histoire Naturelle appears among the top five in terms of total number of citations in academic journals, along with the classic works by D’Orbigny on cepalopods and Malthus on population growth. Nonetheless, Risso’s major work is unknown to most of us other than perhaps fish taxonomists, and specialists in scientific illustration. Here an attempt is made to introduce to a broad audience Antoine Risso’s interesting life and his major work, as well as the work of Jean Gabriel Prêtre.


Plant and simian thinking, links between the living

The animated film "The Prince’s voyage" (2019), based on a previous film "A Monkey’s Tale" (1999), and inspired by Italo Calvino’s book "The Baron in the Trees" (1957), is marked by a strong vegetal influence, diversity and continuity. The film invites us into a fictional world, in which monkeys are the main animal species, with contrasting lifestyles. Throughout the film, we encounter all kinds of plants: the plant that supports and accompanies life, or on the contrary, hinders constructions that destroy it; the wild or domesticated plant; the decorative plant; the pharmakon plant, both remedy and poison; the threatening plant, physical or chemical. The plant world is thus present in the wealth of transactions (Dewey and Bentley 1949) that are established between species. Anthropology tells us that nature does not exist, that it is the world from which humans have withdrawn, the baron does not withdraw from nature but looks "at the world from the top of his tree: everything, seen from there, was different". The way in which humans perceive continuities and discontinuities in the world between humans and non-humans (Descola, 2011) is expressed differently in the film according to the different ape peoples. Could we then invent and reinvent "nature"? We are invited, by following the baron and the film, to contemplate and question our link to plants. How do the transactions established with the living world make the world?


Other issues :

2017

Volume 17- 1

Issue 1

2018

Volume 18- 2

Issue 1

Accounts

2019

Volume 19- 3

Issue 1

Issue 2

2020

Volume 20- 4

Special issue

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

2021

Volume 21- 5

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Special issue

Issue 4

2022

Volume 22- 6

Issue 1
Special issue
Issue 2

Issue 3
Issue 4

2023

Volume 23- 7

Issue 1
Issue 2