Dendrites as Objects of Care and Speculation

Abstract The University of Göttingen is well known for its Academic Museum, a teaching collection founded in 1773 to attract new students and to enhance its reputation. Roughly forty years earlier, around the time of its founding, this University’s collections environment was less robust. The two most popular collections from this early period were mineralogical and paleontological. Although they only rarely figure in formal institutional histories, they were sites of substantive pedagogical engagement. In this article, I consider the status of figured stones, especially dendrites, as teaching tools and their appeal as sites of lessons about care, use, fruitfulness and productivity that helped link the pursuit of “worldly wisdom” (Weltweisheit) to the study of the natural world. I explore the speculative dimensions of recovering pedagogical work with academic collections found in households, a task I argue is especially important in light of the labor students were encouraged to perform as they consumed the collections available to them as reservoirs of possibility, resources and energy.