Image Database SNF-Sinergia Project "In the Shadow of the Tree"

SNF Sinergia Project with four research groups: Profs. Marianne Sommer (University of Lucerne), Simon Teuscher (University of Zurich), Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter and Lübeck), Caroline Arni (University of Basel). Financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation from February 2019 to January 2024. ‘In the Shadow of the Tree: The Diagrammatics of Relatedness as Scientific, Scholarly, and Popular Practice’ is an interdisciplinary collaboration of four research groups investigating the bewildering variety of diagrams that have been used to conceptualize, determine, and produce relatedness in Western Europe and in spaces of European expansion since the Late Medieval Period. Work on the ‘tree of life’ has brought to light unexpected evolutionary affinities, and the possibility to study the genetic make-up of human populations as well as to identify the place of individual human DNA within ‘the human family tree’ has impacted our understandings of relatedness. In parallel, new digital methods to visualize such relations have proliferated. Drawing on a long cultural and scientific history, such visualizations tend to take the form of a tree, reflecting the assumption that evolution and descent follow a bifurcating pattern. ‘Tree thinking’ has therefore been identified as a dominant mode of thought and the tree as a canonical icon in modern biology. Indeed, tree thinking has been made out as a general modern Western rationale that reduces relatedness to descent. Rather than tracing the history of a particular idea or icon, however, we offer a comparative analysis of diagrams of relatedness as epistemic, cultural, and political practices. The project introduces a new interdisciplinary approach to diagrammatics that analyzes diagrams as techniques that transcend such binaries as ‘thought and action’ and ‘image and text’ and includes the reconstruction of the practices of collection, observation, experimentation, modelling, drafting, commenting, explaining etc. that inform diagrams of relatedness, as well as the politics of their production and use.

SNF协同项目（SNF Sinergia Project）由四个研究团队组成：卢塞恩大学玛丽安娜·佐默（Marianne Sommer）教授、苏黎世大学西蒙·托伊舍尔（Simon Teuscher）教授、埃克塞特大学与吕贝克大学施塔凡·米勒-维勒（Staffan Müller-Wille）教授，以及巴塞尔大学卡罗琳·阿尔尼（Caroline Arni）教授。该项目由瑞士国家科学基金会（Swiss National Science Foundation）资助，资助周期为2019年2月至2024年1月。《树影之下：作为科学、学术与大众实践的亲缘关系图示学》是一项跨学科合作项目，四个研究团队将共同探究自中世纪晚期以来，在西欧及欧洲扩张区域中，被用于构想、界定并构建亲缘关系的各类纷繁复杂的图示。针对“生命之树”的研究揭示了此前未被发现的进化亲缘关联，而诸如研究人类群体遗传构成、定位个体人类DNA在“人类家族树”中位置的相关进展，也重塑了我们对亲缘关系的认知。与此同时，用于可视化这类关联的新型数字方法大量涌现。这类可视化成果依托悠久的文化与科学历史，大多采用树形结构，这反映了“进化与血统遵循分叉式发展模式”的预设认知。因此，“树形思维”被视作现代生物学中占主导地位的思维范式，而树也成为了现代生物学的经典标志性符号。事实上，树形思维已被阐释为一种典型的现代西方理性框架，它将亲缘关系简化为血统传承关系。不过，本项目并未追溯某一特定理念或符号的历史，而是将亲缘关系图示作为认识论、文化与政治实践展开比较分析。本项目提出了一种全新的图示学跨学科研究路径，该路径将图示视为超越“思想与行动”“图像与文本”等二元对立的技术手段，并涵盖对以下实践的重构：收集、观察、实验、建模、起草、注释、阐释等——这些实践共同塑造了亲缘关系图示，同时也涵盖了这类图示的生产与使用背后的政治逻辑。