Raf De Bont
Biographic Data
| ID | 955468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Raf De Bont |
| GIVEN NAMES | Raf |
| FAMILY NAME | De Bont |
| SIGNATURE | DE BONT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Maastricht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2121-8047 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
A computerised ark
In 1974, the International Species Information System (ISIS) was launched as a computerised database for zoo animals. Developed by a small group in Minneapolis, ISIS is now used by over 1,300 zoos on five continents and recognised as a crucial tool for ex situ conservation. The founders aimed to transform long-standing global patterns of zoo animal management. Rather than places where wild-caught animals went to die, they envisioned zoos as inter…
Flying Rhinos
This article analyzes both the symbolic and material impact of the move of two northern white rhinos, Paul and Chloe, who were flown from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to Antwerp Zoo in 1950. As the first zoo-held northern white rhinos anywhere in the world, they quickly turned into celebrities. The transport by plane—dubbed a “flying ark”—spurred media attention and was used to create an image of the zoo as a modern institution of science and conservatio…
Wild by Design
The Economy of Rarity
From the mid-twentieth century onward, zoological gardens across the world gradually developed an agenda of ex situ conservation. An obvious prerequisite for such an agenda to succeed was that the zoos in question obtained endangered animals from the wild. This article analyzes the “economy of rarity” created by this demand by focusing on the career of the Swiss couple Emy and Charles Cordier, who made a business of catching, acclimatizing, and t…
Moving across the Zoo-Field Border
The twentieth century witnessed the rise of zoo biology. Such a discipline might seem anchored in a specific spatial setting (that of the zoological garden), but if historians want to understand its development they should not limit their view to the confines of the zoo grounds. After all, understanding animals and their behavior at the zoo often involved thinking about them in other spaces as well. Notably, the “artificial” state of animals in c…
Hamster numbers
Numbers of European hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) in the Dutch Province of Limburg have been subject to much scrutiny and controversy. In the late nineteenth century, policymakers who considered them too numerous (and invasive) set up eradication programs. In the second half of the twentieth century, even when its domestic relative (Mesocricetus auratus) increasingly circulated as a pet in urban spaces, the numbers of European hamsters in the rura…
Eating game
Around 1960, leading figures in the international conservation circuit – such as Julian Huxley, Frank Fraser Darling and E. Barton Worthington – successfully propagated new visions about the value of undomesticated African mammals. Against traditional ideas, they presented these mammals as a highly efficient source of protein for growing African populations. In line with this vision, they challenged non-interventionist ideals of nature preservati…
Bernhard Gissibl, The Nature of German Imperialism
Humor in a Time of Science Wars
Previous articleNext article FreeSecond Look: Isabelle Stengers, L’invention des sciences modernesHumor in a Time of Science Wars: Rereading Isabelle StengersRaf De BontRaf De Bont Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreL’invention des sciences modernes, by the Belgian chemist, philosopher, and a…
A World Laboratory
The Albert National Park in Belgian Congo was founded in 1925 on the initiative of a small but well-connected transnational network of naturalists, diplomats, and royals. Throughout the park’s existence, this network discursively framed it as a place of scientific research and international collaboration, thus linking it with values of universalism and inclusiveness. The rhetoric of the park as a “world laboratory” facilitated the access of a glo…
Conservation Conferences and Expert Networks in the Short Twentieth Century
The twentieth century witnessed the rise of a conservation movement that presented itself as 'international' and 'science-based'. This article analyses the changing transnational networks of experts mobilised by this movement. It does so by studying the participant lists of 21 influential international conservation conferences held between 1913 and 1990. On the basis of a database we were able to trace changes in the national background, discipli…
Machine Metaphors
This essay welcomes Frans van Lunteren's synthetic history of science, constructed around four machine metaphors, as didactically straightforward and intellectually stimulating. It also develops some critical reflections. These concern the Western character of the metaphors in question, the extent to which they can capture disciplinary variation and long-term continuities, their performative character, and the ways they build up to a long-term na…
"Primitives" and Protected Areas
This article explores a long-standing discursive tradition within international nature conservation. In this tradition the argument is made that "primitive" people should be allowed to live in the areas the conservationists deem as "pristine" or "natural." The article explores the (changing) relative importance of this tradition in the conservation discourse as a whole, and analyzes the shifting composition of its argumentative arsenal from the 1…
Writing in Letters of Blood
'The essence of the spirit, the British morphologist Thomas Huxley claimed in 1880, criticism. He continued: tells us that to whatever doctrine claiming our assent we should reply: take it if you can compel it. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.2 The image Huxley evokes …
The Scientist as Activist
status: Published
Landscapes of Nostalgia
The nature protection movement in early twentieth-century Belgium mobilised activists of diverse backgrounds. Among these, two circles stand out. On the one hand, there was a group of life scientists, who gathered in the Belgian League for the Protection of Nature; on the other, a group of literary intellectuals, who organised themselves in the Society for Natural and Urban Beauty. In this article, the discursive strategies employed by both group…
How Darwinism has affected Catholic as well as non-Catholic psycho-pedagogical constructs in Belgium from the 1870s to the 1930s
On the basis of their individual preliminary studies, the authors consider in this article the impact of Darwinism on psycho-pedagogical constructs in Belgium in the period before the Second World War. Their findings are put together around three positions, which are, in fact, hypotheses for further research: (1) The “influence” of Darwin on Belgian psycho-pedagogical theory did not proceed in a straight line but generally indirectly, that is, vi…
Schizophrenia, evolution and the borders of biology
In October 1964, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer co-published a controversial paper in Nature, in which they tried to explain the persistence of schizophrenia from an evolutionary perspective. This article will elucidate how the reputed authors composed this paper to make it a strong argument for biological psychiatry. Through a close reading of their correspondence, it will furthermore clarify the elements which remai…
Organisms in Their Milieu
This essay tells the story of early French ethology--"the science dealing with the habits of living beings and their relations, both with each other and with the cosmic environment." The driving force behind this "ethological movement" was the biologist Alfred Giard (1846-1908). The essay discusses how the ethological viewpoint of Giard and his pupils developed in a period in which the current disciplines of field biology were not yet crystallize…
Du folklore à l'ethnologie
Le passage des études de folklore à l'ethnologie en France s'est fait dans la période troublée qui va du Front populaire à la Libération. Le folklore scientifique se construit de manière ambivalente, dans le cadre d'une politique culturelle qui fait la part belle aux traditions régionales : à la fois ouverte sur la modernité, et fascinée par un passé volontiers idéalisé. Avec l'avènement du régime de Vichy, le folklore devient l'instrument de la …
Between the Laboratory and the Deep Blue Sea
In the 1870s, the life sciences witnessed the rise of a new site for scientific research: the marine station. This new workplace brought the laboratory of the biologist closer to the natural surroundings of the marine organisms that he/she was studying. It was therefore a site where the lab could be 'renaturalized'. In this paper, the extent of this 'renaturalization' is studied with regard to two stations. The first, Anton Dohrn's Stazione zoolo…
Material Rhetoric
ArgumentSince the linguistic turn, the role of rhetoric in the circulation and the popular representation of knowledge has been widely accepted in science studies. This article aims to analyze not a textual form of scientific rhetoric, but the crucial role of materiality in scientific debates. It introduces the concept ofmaterial rhetoricto understand the promotional regimes in which material objects play an essential argumentative role. It analy…
The Creation of Prehistoric Man
Although he died in obscurity, the Belgian museum conservator Aimé Rutot (1847-1933) was one of the most famous European archaeologists between 1900 and 1920. The focus of his scientific interest was stone flints, which he claimed to be the oldest known human tools, so-called eoliths. Skeptics maintained that the flints showed no marks of human workmanship, but Rutot nevertheless managed to spread his "Eolithic theory" in an important part of the…
Between the Laboratory and the Deep Blue Sea
In the 1870s, the life sciences witnessed the rise of a new site for scientific research: the marine station. This new workplace brought the laboratory of the biologist closer to the natural surroundings of the marine organisms that he/she was studying. It was therefore a site where the lab could be 'renaturalized'. In this paper, the extent of this 'renaturalization' is studied with regard to two stations. The first, Anton Dohrn's Stazione zoolo…
The Creation of Prehistoric Man
Although he died in obscurity, the Belgian museum conservator Aimé Rutot (1847-1933) was one of the most famous European archaeologists between 1900 and 1920. The focus of his scientific interest was stone flints, which he claimed to be the oldest known human tools, so-called eoliths. Skeptics maintained that the flints showed no marks of human workmanship, but Rutot nevertheless managed to spread his "Eolithic theory" in an important part of the…
A World Laboratory
The Albert National Park in Belgian Congo was founded in 1925 on the initiative of a small but well-connected transnational network of naturalists, diplomats, and royals. Throughout the park’s existence, this network discursively framed it as a place of scientific research and international collaboration, thus linking it with values of universalism and inclusiveness. The rhetoric of the park as a “world laboratory” facilitated the access of a glo…
Conservation Conferences and Expert Networks in the Short Twentieth Century
The twentieth century witnessed the rise of a conservation movement that presented itself as 'international' and 'science-based'. This article analyses the changing transnational networks of experts mobilised by this movement. It does so by studying the participant lists of 21 influential international conservation conferences held between 1913 and 1990. On the basis of a database we were able to trace changes in the national background, discipli…
Organisms in Their Milieu
This essay tells the story of early French ethology--"the science dealing with the habits of living beings and their relations, both with each other and with the cosmic environment." The driving force behind this "ethological movement" was the biologist Alfred Giard (1846-1908). The essay discusses how the ethological viewpoint of Giard and his pupils developed in a period in which the current disciplines of field biology were not yet crystallize…
"Primitives" and Protected Areas
This article explores a long-standing discursive tradition within international nature conservation. In this tradition the argument is made that "primitive" people should be allowed to live in the areas the conservationists deem as "pristine" or "natural." The article explores the (changing) relative importance of this tradition in the conservation discourse as a whole, and analyzes the shifting composition of its argumentative arsenal from the 1…
Material Rhetoric
ArgumentSince the linguistic turn, the role of rhetoric in the circulation and the popular representation of knowledge has been widely accepted in science studies. This article aims to analyze not a textual form of scientific rhetoric, but the crucial role of materiality in scientific debates. It introduces the concept ofmaterial rhetoricto understand the promotional regimes in which material objects play an essential argumentative role. It analy…
Hamster numbers
Numbers of European hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) in the Dutch Province of Limburg have been subject to much scrutiny and controversy. In the late nineteenth century, policymakers who considered them too numerous (and invasive) set up eradication programs. In the second half of the twentieth century, even when its domestic relative (Mesocricetus auratus) increasingly circulated as a pet in urban spaces, the numbers of European hamsters in the rura…
Eating game
Around 1960, leading figures in the international conservation circuit – such as Julian Huxley, Frank Fraser Darling and E. Barton Worthington – successfully propagated new visions about the value of undomesticated African mammals. Against traditional ideas, they presented these mammals as a highly efficient source of protein for growing African populations. In line with this vision, they challenged non-interventionist ideals of nature preservati…
Writing in Letters of Blood
'The essence of the spirit, the British morphologist Thomas Huxley claimed in 1880, criticism. He continued: tells us that to whatever doctrine claiming our assent we should reply: take it if you can compel it. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.2 The image Huxley evokes …
Landscapes of Nostalgia
The nature protection movement in early twentieth-century Belgium mobilised activists of diverse backgrounds. Among these, two circles stand out. On the one hand, there was a group of life scientists, who gathered in the Belgian League for the Protection of Nature; on the other, a group of literary intellectuals, who organised themselves in the Society for Natural and Urban Beauty. In this article, the discursive strategies employed by both group…
The Creation of Prehistoric Man
Although he died in obscurity, the Belgian museum conservator Aimé Rutot (1847-1933) was one of the most famous European archaeologists between 1900 and 1920. The focus of his scientific interest was stone flints, which he claimed to be the oldest known human tools, so-called eoliths. Skeptics maintained that the flints showed no marks of human workmanship, but Rutot nevertheless managed to spread his "Eolithic theory" in an important part of the…
Du folklore à l'ethnologie
Le passage des études de folklore à l'ethnologie en France s'est fait dans la période troublée qui va du Front populaire à la Libération. Le folklore scientifique se construit de manière ambivalente, dans le cadre d'une politique culturelle qui fait la part belle aux traditions régionales : à la fois ouverte sur la modernité, et fascinée par un passé volontiers idéalisé. Avec l'avènement du régime de Vichy, le folklore devient l'instrument de la …
Between the Laboratory and the Deep Blue Sea
In the 1870s, the life sciences witnessed the rise of a new site for scientific research: the marine station. This new workplace brought the laboratory of the biologist closer to the natural surroundings of the marine organisms that he/she was studying. It was therefore a site where the lab could be 'renaturalized'. In this paper, the extent of this 'renaturalization' is studied with regard to two stations. The first, Anton Dohrn's Stazione zoolo…
Material Rhetoric
ArgumentSince the linguistic turn, the role of rhetoric in the circulation and the popular representation of knowledge has been widely accepted in science studies. This article aims to analyze not a textual form of scientific rhetoric, but the crucial role of materiality in scientific debates. It introduces the concept ofmaterial rhetoricto understand the promotional regimes in which material objects play an essential argumentative role. It analy…
Schizophrenia, evolution and the borders of biology
In October 1964, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer co-published a controversial paper in Nature, in which they tried to explain the persistence of schizophrenia from an evolutionary perspective. This article will elucidate how the reputed authors composed this paper to make it a strong argument for biological psychiatry. Through a close reading of their correspondence, it will furthermore clarify the elements which remai…
Organisms in Their Milieu
This essay tells the story of early French ethology--"the science dealing with the habits of living beings and their relations, both with each other and with the cosmic environment." The driving force behind this "ethological movement" was the biologist Alfred Giard (1846-1908). The essay discusses how the ethological viewpoint of Giard and his pupils developed in a period in which the current disciplines of field biology were not yet crystallize…
The Scientist as Activist
status: Published
Landscapes of Nostalgia
The nature protection movement in early twentieth-century Belgium mobilised activists of diverse backgrounds. Among these, two circles stand out. On the one hand, there was a group of life scientists, who gathered in the Belgian League for the Protection of Nature; on the other, a group of literary intellectuals, who organised themselves in the Society for Natural and Urban Beauty. In this article, the discursive strategies employed by both group…
How Darwinism has affected Catholic as well as non-Catholic psycho-pedagogical constructs in Belgium from the 1870s to the 1930s
On the basis of their individual preliminary studies, the authors consider in this article the impact of Darwinism on psycho-pedagogical constructs in Belgium in the period before the Second World War. Their findings are put together around three positions, which are, in fact, hypotheses for further research: (1) The “influence” of Darwin on Belgian psycho-pedagogical theory did not proceed in a straight line but generally indirectly, that is, vi…
Writing in Letters of Blood
'The essence of the spirit, the British morphologist Thomas Huxley claimed in 1880, criticism. He continued: tells us that to whatever doctrine claiming our assent we should reply: take it if you can compel it. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.2 The image Huxley evokes …
"Primitives" and Protected Areas
This article explores a long-standing discursive tradition within international nature conservation. In this tradition the argument is made that "primitive" people should be allowed to live in the areas the conservationists deem as "pristine" or "natural." The article explores the (changing) relative importance of this tradition in the conservation discourse as a whole, and analyzes the shifting composition of its argumentative arsenal from the 1…
Machine Metaphors
This essay welcomes Frans van Lunteren's synthetic history of science, constructed around four machine metaphors, as didactically straightforward and intellectually stimulating. It also develops some critical reflections. These concern the Western character of the metaphors in question, the extent to which they can capture disciplinary variation and long-term continuities, their performative character, and the ways they build up to a long-term na…
A World Laboratory
The Albert National Park in Belgian Congo was founded in 1925 on the initiative of a small but well-connected transnational network of naturalists, diplomats, and royals. Throughout the park’s existence, this network discursively framed it as a place of scientific research and international collaboration, thus linking it with values of universalism and inclusiveness. The rhetoric of the park as a “world laboratory” facilitated the access of a glo…
Conservation Conferences and Expert Networks in the Short Twentieth Century
The twentieth century witnessed the rise of a conservation movement that presented itself as 'international' and 'science-based'. This article analyses the changing transnational networks of experts mobilised by this movement. It does so by studying the participant lists of 21 influential international conservation conferences held between 1913 and 1990. On the basis of a database we were able to trace changes in the national background, discipli…
Bernhard Gissibl, The Nature of German Imperialism
Humor in a Time of Science Wars
Previous articleNext article FreeSecond Look: Isabelle Stengers, L’invention des sciences modernesHumor in a Time of Science Wars: Rereading Isabelle StengersRaf De BontRaf De Bont Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreL’invention des sciences modernes, by the Belgian chemist, philosopher, and a…
Eating game
Around 1960, leading figures in the international conservation circuit – such as Julian Huxley, Frank Fraser Darling and E. Barton Worthington – successfully propagated new visions about the value of undomesticated African mammals. Against traditional ideas, they presented these mammals as a highly efficient source of protein for growing African populations. In line with this vision, they challenged non-interventionist ideals of nature preservati…
Hamster numbers
Numbers of European hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) in the Dutch Province of Limburg have been subject to much scrutiny and controversy. In the late nineteenth century, policymakers who considered them too numerous (and invasive) set up eradication programs. In the second half of the twentieth century, even when its domestic relative (Mesocricetus auratus) increasingly circulated as a pet in urban spaces, the numbers of European hamsters in the rura…
Moving across the Zoo-Field Border
The twentieth century witnessed the rise of zoo biology. Such a discipline might seem anchored in a specific spatial setting (that of the zoological garden), but if historians want to understand its development they should not limit their view to the confines of the zoo grounds. After all, understanding animals and their behavior at the zoo often involved thinking about them in other spaces as well. Notably, the “artificial” state of animals in c…
The Economy of Rarity
From the mid-twentieth century onward, zoological gardens across the world gradually developed an agenda of ex situ conservation. An obvious prerequisite for such an agenda to succeed was that the zoos in question obtained endangered animals from the wild. This article analyzes the “economy of rarity” created by this demand by focusing on the career of the Swiss couple Emy and Charles Cordier, who made a business of catching, acclimatizing, and t…
Wild by Design
A computerised ark
In 1974, the International Species Information System (ISIS) was launched as a computerised database for zoo animals. Developed by a small group in Minneapolis, ISIS is now used by over 1,300 zoos on five continents and recognised as a crucial tool for ex situ conservation. The founders aimed to transform long-standing global patterns of zoo animal management. Rather than places where wild-caught animals went to die, they envisioned zoos as inter…
Flying Rhinos
This article analyzes both the symbolic and material impact of the move of two northern white rhinos, Paul and Chloe, who were flown from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to Antwerp Zoo in 1950. As the first zoo-held northern white rhinos anywhere in the world, they quickly turned into celebrities. The transport by plane—dubbed a “flying ark”—spurred media attention and was used to create an image of the zoo as a modern institution of science and conservatio…
Philosophy (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Environmental ethics (10 works) · Geography (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Biology (8 works)