The culture of proof: Science, religion, and photography in America, 1780--1875

The Culture of Proof traces the evolving contours of scientific and religious discourse in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century U.S. culture, and argues that concurrent developments in both fields of inquiry helped foster an emergent "culture of proof" in the early republic. Partly an adaptation of Enlightenment empiricism to the North-American terrain, and partly an incorporation of natural theology into religious epistemology, "the culture of proof" was predicated upon the belief that the accumulation, classification, and presentation of "natural facts" was the method best-suited to revealing truths about the universe. As the nineteenth century progressed, the "culture of proof" took on an increasingly visual cast, one which informed and conditioned the reception of the photographic camera in America.;Thomas Jefferson's efforts to catalogue the natural features of his home state in Notes on the State of Virginia embodied both a popularization of, and a resistance to, the truth-claims supplied by empirical science. Even as Jefferson inventoried the raw materials of his state, he acknowledged the constructed nature of classificatory systems and betrayed fears about the conclusions to which they could lead when guided by political or religious ideologies.;As the founding editor of The American Journal of Science, Benjamin Silliman helped summon into being a broad, nationally-based association of professional scientists. The journal provided scientific investigators with a communal space in which empirical evidence could be not only shared and evaluated, but also communicated to a non-specialist audience. The truth-claims of the emerging "culture of proof" were reinforced by evangelical Protestants such as Charles Grandison Finney, Edward Hitchcock, and Orville Dewey, who joined the scientific call for investigation of "natural facts" and claimed that such studies would demonstrate divine intention and design.;The "culture of proof" generated a need for precise documentation that the photographic camera eventually fulfilled. Scientists and theologians quickly championed the "objective" qualities of the new medium. The "culture of proof" had conditioned Americans to search for empirical evidence of divine intention in nature, and the camera seemed to provide that evidence. Photography gave Americans something to believe in just as they came to doubt belief itself.