The World as We Know It. Sclater’s Six-Region Model and the Life Sciences, 1858 to Today

They became the foundation for research into the geographic distribution of living organisms, which, in turn, became a component of one of the nineteenth century’s most contested scientific phenomena: Evolution. Today most biologists take the existence of the Sclaterian regions for granted, yet they are the product of centuries of classificatory work on living organisms, experimental research into the environment’s influence on their behavior and physical appearance, and negotiations of the epistemic borders of scientific disciplines. The Sclaterian regions are, in short, a powerful yet little-researched scientific tool of extraordinary endurance. In this talk, Brooke Penaloza-Patzak discusses how and why the Sclaterian regions came to entwine different fields of inquiry and animate hierarchical notions about the origins and development of humans and other animals.