The Material Turn in the History of Life Science

The material turn or the history of things has become a prominent focus in the history of life science of the long eighteenth century. The reassessment of eighteenth-century science since the 1990s has given particular prominence to medicine and the life sciences. Eighteenth-century anatomists and naturalists studied, collected, imitated, and represented many kinds of natural things, from the human body to trees. This article considers a variety of new approaches to material culture, museums, and collecting among historians of science since 2000, focusing on natural history and anatomy. The historiography of objects invokes a sensory history of seeing and touching, and a global history of movement across time, place, and culture.