Volume 57

2025

Publication date: 02.12.2025

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Editorial team

Editor Prof. dr hab. Robert Zaborowski

Editorial Assistant dr Paulina Pludra-Żuk

Editorial team members dr Mateusz Marszałkowski, dr Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

Issue content

Introduction au volume Collections techniques et scientifiques en quête d'enquêtes : ce que révèlent les objets et leurs archives (Partie 1)

Marie-Sophie Corcy, Arnaud Hurel, Patrice Bret

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 5-13

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.001.22605

In their introduction to the dossier Collections techniques et scientifiques en quête d’enquêtes [Technical and scientific collections in search of research], the authors recall the delay in museum historiography with regard to scientific and technical collections. On the contrary, they emphasise the rich potential of studies devoted to these objects and groups of objects, and they argue in favour of a comprehensive study drawing on all available documentary resources. They consider that such an integral approach (objects, contexts, archives) will enable the collections to retain or regain their scientific relevance, as well as their legitimacy for conservation and promotion to the public.]

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Peut-on considérer les collections scientifiques comme des archives pour l'histoire des sciences ? Le cas d'un ensemble préhistorique de Samrong Sen (Cambodge) au Musée de l'Homme

Adèle Chevalier

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 15-32

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.002.22606

This article examines, through the case study of the prehistoric remains of Samrong Sen (Cambodia), the contribution of collections to the history of science and highlights the importance of studying the materiality of objects in historical research. Analysis of the traces of appropriation borne by these objects reveals practices that are both scientific and museological. Visible on the pieces or their packaging, these marks shed light on the concrete history of science, filling gaps in the archives. The objects themselves document scientific processes (naming, recording, classifying) and museological processes (inventorying, exhibiting, conserving), thus offering a unique perspective on the construction of scientific knowledge

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Enjeux et perspectives de la reconstitution d'un fonds documentaire à l'Herbier de Paris (MNHN) : les Ochnacées dans l'histothèque de Philippe Van Tieghem

Thierry Deroin, Bérangère Offroy, Sophie Gonzalez, Chantal Geniez, Isabel Le Disquet

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 33-44

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.003.22607

In the worldwide context of the renewal of plant anatomy linked to environmental adaptations, the undertaking of new research projects necessarily implies relying upon old reference collections neglected for a long time, and only with difficulty available for consultation for various reasons.
We examine here the case of the Ochnaceae microslide library assembled by Philippe Van Tieghem around 1900, comprising references about the histology of the family. This collection has been repackaged, in preparation for computerisation, its eco- physiological interpretation requiring the making of complementary slides. Thus, enhancement of historical collections is an integral part of current a research.

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Trois images, une histoire : ce que les archives et les objets nous apprennent au sujet des collections universitaires à vocation pédagogique. La nouvelle installation de la collection de zoologie de Sorbonne Université : une étude de cas

Santiago Aragon

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 45-73

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.004.22608

University educational collections need to be integrated to ensure their long-term survival. Often reduced to their heritage value, we must preserve their educational role by opening up to new audiences to include training and debate on current issues. This text is both a historical study and a review of experience, presenting the case of Sorbonne University’s zoology collection. The aim is to show how the study of objects, archives and spaces sheds light on the processes of transmission, transformation and reconfiguration of the university heritage. The analysis will be punctuated by three photographs of the collection taken at different times in its existence. This contribution seeks to serve as a useful testimony for others engaged in similar processes.

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Du mythe à la réécriture de l'histoire muséale des trophées de guerre des insurrections kanak : les enseignements de deux documents épistolaires du Laboratoire d'anthropologie du Musée de l'Homme

Christelle Patin

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 75-86

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.005.22609

The myth of the disappearance of the head of the Kanak chief Ataï from the collections of the Musée de l’Homme has contributed to the public image of an opaque institution, governed by practices of epistemic silencing. However, the institutional reality turns out to be more complex and mosaic-like. Two unpublished institutional documents, dated 1987 and 1988, shed light on the games played by laboratory directors in the elaboration of this narrative, and their contextualization in the prism of representations of decolonisation. In this way, they are helping to rewrite the institutional history of New Caledonian anthropological collections.

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Collections en miettes : reconstituer l'histoire oubliée des bibliothèques universitaires de Montpellier (fin XVIII^e–XIX^e s.)

Élizabeth Denton

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 87-126

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.006.22610

This article describes how the university libraries in Montpellier have been established since the end of the 18th c. The archival sources retracing their history are scattered among various storage locations, so that the very teams entrusted with their safekeeping have lost the sense of the larger picture of this history. Although this narrative is mainly centred on the documentary collections (books and archives), it can also be cross-referenced to the scientific and medical collections. Taking the whole collections into consideration is essential to fully understand the university’s strategy when assembling and then managing these prestigious collections on a daily basis.

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Reconstituer les collections du Musée des Arts et Métiers. Nécessité ou utopie?

Marie-Sophie Corcy

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 127-139

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.007.22611

The main axes of the history of the collections of the Musée des Arts et Métiers are now established, following a rigorous work of identification and analysis of objects and sources. The study of the corpus (provenance, typologies, technical sectors) has highlighted the mechanisms and criteria of acquisition, the notions of innovation and museification, the evolution of museography and museology. The study of the collections in their entirety—objects present and missing— highlights the status of the collections and their traceability. This approach, essential to the ten-year inventory (imposed by the French museums law 2002), requires reconstituting the collection and the state of the archives in relation to management practices.

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Konstanty Michalski, Aleksander Birkenmajer, and the Origins of the Aristoteles Latinus Project

Jacek Soszyński

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 141-158

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.008.22612

The article attempts to present to the English reader the silhouettes of two outstanding Polish scholars active during the 20th c.: the philosopher and historian of philosophy Konstanty Michalski, and the historian of science, philosophy and of the book, Aleksander Birkenmajer. Among other achievements, both these scholars were instrumental in the coming into being and development of one of the most important international projects concerning the history of medieval philosophy—the Aristoteles Latinus Project.

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Young Karl Marx in the Age of Progress: the Historical Materialism of the 1840s and Its Limits

Michał Siermiński

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 159-176

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.009.22613

The article discusses an early version of Karl Marx’s historical materialism. The young Marx was a child of his time—the era of rapid development of technology and science that accompanied the expansion of capitalism. In the 1840s his historical materialism was based on two premises: the Development Thesis (history is the continuous development of the productive forces) and the Primacy Thesis (the level of development of the productive forces determines social relations). On the basis of these assumptions, Marx had serious problems in theoretically grounding his growing enthusiasm for the workers’ class struggle.

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Marx Against Marx: An Outline of Mature Historical Materialism

Michał Siermiński

ORGANON, Volume 57, 2025, pp. 177-199

https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.010.22614

In the 1850s, Karl Marx’s thought underwent a genuine revolution. After relocating to England, he confronted classical political economy anew, finding it unable to account for value growth and capitalist accumulation. Beginning with the methodological turn in the Grundrisse and its explicitly anti-positivist stance, Marx shifted explanation from market appearances to the sphere of production, where surplus value becomes fundamental. This reorientation culminated in a decisive break with his early technolgical determinism: Marx accords primacy to the rela tions of production over productive forces in explaining the origins of capitalism, the dynamics of accumulation and the specifically capitalist drive toward productivity growth.

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Słowa kluczowe: collections, historiography, contexts, archives, museum studies, history of prehistory, prehistorical collections, historical sources, Henri Mansuy, microslide library, plant anatomy, cristarque, inselbergs, university educational collections, teaching, educational heritage, zoology, Sorbonne University, anthropology, the Kanak chief Ataï, colonial history, heritage’s invisibilisation, human remains, New-caledonia, museum, library history, scientific collections, university history, history of medicine, material studies, Musée des Arts et Métiers, collections, traceability, archives, management of collections, philosophy, history of philosophy, histo-ry of learning, history of science, history of the book, Aristoteles Latinus, history, Karl Marx, historical materialism, progress, historiosophy, productive forces, relations of production, class struggle, historical materialism, surplus value, class struggle, primitive accumulation, subsumption of labor, anti-positivism.

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