I must recognise that because most scientific fields have been defined for decades or even centuries, it is unusual for a contemporary scientist to have the chance to conduct an exercise in reflection on a science that he or she has established. More often than not, a specific science is first practised and then later somebody defines it as a new discipline and gives it an appropriate name, and then much later some external observer – generally a philosopher of science – reflects on aspects of it that go beyond the purely scientific. It is this uncommon opportunity that has impelled me, as the founder and a practitioner, to carry out an aesthetic study of haemotaphonomy ‘from within’.
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I suspect that scholars have much abused the search for beauty in science, and I challenge the reader to find texts on aesthetics and science that do not seek to establish a relationship between scientific concerns and beauty. Much has been written on the ‘beauty’ of many structures of the natural and artificial world (inorganic crystals, biomolecules, human devices, etc.). Even mathematical equations and scientific theories have been described as ‘beautiful’, ‘elegant’, ‘well-balanced’, etc. However, little has been written on the actual, genuine aesthetic traits of the sciences or technologies that deal with these or other elements.
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By considering both the intrinsic and extrinsic comparative aspects of haemotaphonomy, in this work I have tried to frame this discipline within the general context of human culture, beyond the purely scientific dimension. Its intrinsic aspects are inherent to the study material (i.e. the bloodstains). The extrinsic factors are consubstantial with how I study this material and how I transmit to others what I discover at every turn (i.e. the images of bloodstains and the associated scientific articles). With slight retouches, a scheme similar to the four-parallel one described in the text for haemotaphonomy could probably be obtained when comparing the morphological studies of many other objects. Furthermore, I have not contemplated an accumulation of scattered stylistic parallels. The scheme that this work follows is not intended to deal with all the aesthetic movements in literature and the visual arts, but only with those that I have found to be self-evidently significant and analytically productive in explaining the aesthetics of the science under examination.
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I began to conceive the ideas that have crystallised in this work long before I commenced writing them. In fact, I have been thinking about and reflecting on these ideas from nearly the beginnings of my studies on erythrocyte morphology in bloodstains. The first thing that entered my head was that haemotaphonomy was a science with close ties to tenebrism and tremendism. Later on, I persuaded myself that haemotaphonomy was also associated with decadentism and the Churrigueresque. In the end, I was able to see how all of these movements converged into the Baroque culture. Thus, when these ideas were already sufficiently matured and verified via bibliographic research on aesthetic criticism and both literary and visual-art movements, I undertook the task of embodying them in a self-consistent discourse.
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For an experimental scientist, it is not an easy task to delve into the maremagnum of the multiple aesthetic movements, very far from his or her daily universe, which is often made up of chemical reagents, pipettes, thermometers, microscopes and all sorts of technical paraphernalia. The simple act of finding the full reference (publisher, place, year) of the first edition of many of the literary works cited in the text, represents per se an arduous bibliographical task. However, as any human act of creation, conducting this study has given rise to a deep personal satisfaction, and I really think that the result is worth the effort made. For me, this book is more than just a discourse on aesthetics and science. Certain aspects of this work represent, either explicitly or implicitly, a journey into the depths of the human soul.
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Although the reasons that have led me to focus this study on the science of haemotaphonomy are obvious, an additional interest of this work is to serve as an example of the procedure for approaching the aesthetics of other sciences. Because each science has its own aesthetics and, consequently, its characteristic cultural framework, I am sure that the topics discussed herein will stimulate similar approaches to other scientific disciplines. In this respect, I am confident that this book will prove useful to both scientists reflecting on aesthetics and aestheticists reflecting on science, as well as to scholars specialising in the history and philosophy of science and anyone interested in the topic of science‑society relationships. First, writing this book has already been useful to me. If a book is not useful to the author, how can we expect it to be useful to its readers? Therefore, I invite the reader to embark on the ‘mystery ship’ that a search for the cultural background of a science always represents.
