The World as We Know It. Sclater’s Six-Region Model and the Life Sciences, 1858 to Today
Most research in biogeography today is based on a 146-year-old model that divides the world into six regions. These so-called Sclaterian regions were originally proposed by lawyer and zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater on the basis of the global distribution of birds, and subsequently adopted across the life sciences. 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. Brooke Penaloza-Patzak researches 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.
Brooke Penaloza-Patzak is a historian interested in the social, material, economic, and environmental aspects of scientific practice and knowledge production and is currently completing her first book, entitled With Objects at Hand. The Rise and Fall of the Natural Science of Human Culture, 1860–1930. From 2022–23 she was a visiting researcher at the University of Vienna Institute for Economic and Social History, and at the Department for the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania from 2020–2022. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, the American Museum of Natural History, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Science Fund, Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, and Smithsonian Institution. She received her PhD from the University of Vienna, Department of History, MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center in New York City, and BFA with a concentration in Byzantine-style panel painting from the New York State College of Ceramics.
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Most research in biogeography today is based on a 146-year-old model that divides the world into six regions. These so-called Sclaterian regions were originally proposed by lawyer and zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater on the basis of the global distribution of birds, and subsequently adopted by researchers across the life sciences.