The Form of Becoming - by Janina Wellmann (Hardcover)

About the Book

An examination of the constitutive role of rhythm and movement in the visualization of developing life.

Book Synopsis

The Form of Becoming offers an innovative understanding of the emergence around 1800 of the science of embryology and a new notion of development, one based on the epistemology of rhythm. It argues that between 1760 and 1830, the concept of rhythm became crucial to many fields of knowledge, including the study of life and living processes.

The book juxtaposes the history of rhythm in music theory, literary theory, and philosophy with the concurrent turn in biology to understanding the living world in terms of rhythmic patterns, rhythmic movement, and rhythmic representations. Common to all these fields was their view of rhythm as a means of organizing time -- and of ordering the development of organisms.

Janina Wellmann, a historian of science, has written the first systematic study of visualization in embryology. Embryological development circa 1800 was imagined through the pictorial technique of the series, still prevalent in the field today. Tracing the origins of the developmental series back to seventeenth-century instructional graphics for military maneuvers, dance, and craft work, The Form of Becoming reveals the constitutive role of rhythm and movement in the visualization of developing life.

Review Quotes

"Historian of science Janina Wellmann ha[s]... demonstrated the rich potential of thinking about rhythm in terms of an episteme that structures knowledge across different disciplines, and also provides a history for this kind of thinking. The Form of Becoming presents an admirable and highly ambitious tour-de-force through philosophy, literature, music theory, instructional iconography and, of course, early embryology."---Irmtraud Huber, The British Society for Literature and Science

"To understand the richness that once attended the discipline of aesthetics we need to go back in time, and there we find it not only in discussions about art and poetry, but also rigorously interrogated as a philosophy of science, and even military practice. Janina Wellmann's The Form of Becoming provides a detailed account of a period when the role of aesthetics was still seen as a main stage for a universal philosophy."---Catherine Despont, BOMB