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Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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« Research Blogging, the next generation | Main | The Boneyard #23 is up! »
Photo of the Day #329: Indian rhinoceros
Category: Mammals • Photography
Posted on: September 3, 2008 9:42 AM, by Brian Switek
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Life Science
Comments
Genuine Indian Rhinoceros! Accept No Substitutes!
A marvelous animal, and one all students of Art History and/or Philosophy of Science should contemplate. "In the first place," so to speak, Ernst Gombricht used the FAMOUS RHINOCEROS PICTURE example in his "Art and Illusion": presenting Albrecht Durer's woodcut, then a 19th century illustration supposedly painted "from the life" but showing distinctly Dureresque features, and ("lastly") a photo -- a very different-looking photo -- of a rhinoceros. So all art historians know it as an example of how learned artistic "schemata" can override actual perception in the composition of supposedly naturalistic images.
Then Paul Feyerabend took over the example (with credit to Gombricht) in a note to his "Problems of Empiricism." So now all philosophers of science know it as an example of the theory-ladenness of observation.
But -- accept no substitutes! -- Durer's caption makes clear that his rhinoceros is from India. And the photo is of an African (I think White) rhinoceros: a very different animal. Durer's image, though not photographic, is in fact impressively accurate: look at a bunch of photos of Indian rhinoceroses and you'll see that even the most baroque-seeming bits of decoration on Durer's beast can be seen as a representation of genuine features shown by some if not all members of the species!
Rhinos are my favoite Perissodactyls.
Posted by: Allen Hazen | September 4, 2008 2:44 AM