386 Livingstone
of learning “either Children, Servants, or People of the lower Class.”^29
Their testimony, even to the experiences of their own bodies, could not
be trusted.^30 Once again, in determining the reliability of experimental
testimony, the space of its practice was a signifi cant element in the ac-
quisition of warrant. Moreover, using the body as an experimental site
raised moral questions. Those grotesque experiments in what was called
Racial Hygiene during the 1940s in concentration camps like Auschwitz
and Buchenwald—which delivered such experimental knowledge as how
long a person can survive in icy waters or in very low pressures—reminds
us that in these sinister spaces, the cost of scientifi c enlightenment was
moral darkness.^31 Physical spaces are moral spaces too.SPACES OF EXPEDITION
Recalling attention to Humboldt as the embodied site of experimentation
reminds us that it is not only in the laboratory that scientifi c inquiry, even
of the experimental variety, is conducted. Indeed, as Dorinda Outram has
shown, it was around the persona of Humboldt that disputes revolved
about the proper place of “real” scientifi c investigation. The debate found
its animus in Georges Cuvier’s contrast between the methods of a scientifi c
traveler like Humboldt and a sedentary naturalist like himself.^32 Because the
experience of explorers was inescapably fragmentary and fl eeting, Cuvier
felt it could not be compared with the stable and thus reliable vision of the
bench naturalist who saw nature steadily and saw it whole. Only when the
samples harvested by the traveler were spread out before the laboratory
man could impressionism give way to information. The expeditionary
naturalist passed too quickly over terrain to do good science. For Cuvier,
the most successful scientifi c voyages never weighed anchor for the simple
reason that they never left the workshop. So, while the sedentary natu-
ralist insisted that it was absence from wild nature that secured epistemic
privilege, this was precisely what fi eld naturalists denied. To them presence
in the wide- open spaces of the fi eld was required to deliver warranted
credibility. Here again the space of inquiry was a crucial ingredient in dis-
putes over the appropriate means of making natural knowledge.
Knowledge acquired in the fi eld, however, raised other questions
about credibility. How could metropolitan scientists be assured that the
information brought home from afar was reliable? And how could sci-
entifi c travelers justify their reports? A moment late in the motion pic-
ture Mountains of the Moon provides some intriguing hints about what I
want to call “embodied warrant.”^33 The scene is staged at the September