ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Models by Necessity: Dogs and Animal Experiments in Seventeenth Century Science

• In Event: Experimentation and Discovery

English Abstract

What makes a good model organism? Historians of science have approached the use of animals in research and experimentation from the perspective of scientists’ interests and animals’ own features: species are chosen often for their qualities, whether it is short reproduction cycles, similarities to the human body, or ease of handling. But the role animals play in science is also determined by forces beyond the lab. Focusing on the use of animals in scientific experiments in seventeenth-century science, my paper traces the emergence of dogs as an unexpected model organism at the Royal Society and Académie des Sciences. Despite their initial marginal role as fodder for anatomy students, by the end of the seventeenth century dogs became the animals of choice for testing and producing knowledge about human and nonhuman bodies, even as they remained unremarkable as objects of inquiry.
Through administrative sources and meeting protocols from scientific societies in London and Paris, my paper follows dogs from the margins to the institutional centers of early modern science. I argue that though the use of dogs had little theoretical justification, their emergent role as model organisms reflects the pragmatic considerations of scientists embedded in their environments. As a predominantly urban practice that required the continuous and plentiful supply of bodies, experimentation on animals turned to rely on owned and unclaimed dogs that populated early modern cities. Thus, this episode in the history of model organisms reveals how scientific practice is embedded in, and shaped by, environmental contexts and logistical constraints.

Author

• Guy Erez, New York University