18th Century Times of Nature: Cultural Techniques in Gilbert White’s Natural History

Abstract

This paper is an examination of Gilbert White’s practice of making natural history which took place in the latter half of the 18th-century. White’s knowledge project concerned itself mainly with the issue of natural rhythms; the migration patterns of birds, indications of spring, and differences in blooming times in different plants and flowers. It was thus a concern with nature which was particularly temporal. This concern was further situated within a broader effort in Britain at the time to create calendars of nature. In working towards this goal, which among other things involved ascertaining the punctuality of natural rhythms, Gilbert White used a printed journal, titled The Naturalist’s Journal, with a lay-out based on a lattice-grid, in order to record natural events. The argument of this paper is that this was a material-semiotic practice whose effects were not only epistemological. By applying the media theoretical concept of cultural techniques to Gilbert White’s knowledge practice, I argue that it becomes possible to show how time was constituted in a specific way through the use of the journal. Through the actor-network which was its condition of possibility, the times of nature were rendered as precise rather than approximate, and became legible as an array of detached animal, insect and plant events which could be inscribed, transported, aggregated and viewed at a glance. I further argue that these acts of rendering and making legible were the outcome of five cultural techniques which became blackboxed in the use of the Journal. By unblackboxing the Journal, I claim that it is possible to show how it operated upon the phenomena it purported to represent, and ultimately what consequences it had concerning the times of nature. However, I also argue that cultural techniques only become operational by being circulated through culturally and historically specific circuits, and so a crucial part of unpacking the work of cultural techniques involves a thorough contextualization of the social context.