A mysterious force capable of binding things as well as people together and a guiding moral principle, the concept of “sympathy” in the late eighteenth century blurred the boundaries between superstition and Enlightenment rationality. What light might this “sympathy” shed on James Cook’s last voyage? What might it say about the induction of artifacts brought back from that voyage into European collections and, correspondingly, the contemporaneous introduction of “European” objects into Pacific cosmologies? Focusing on the materiality of these objects, specifically, the feather, allows us to explore the ways in which “sympathy” both unites and divides these heterogeneous archives.

中文翻译：

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同情，磁性和谦虚的笑声：库克最后一次航行中的羽毛

十八世纪后期，“同情”概念是一种能够将人与人捆绑在一起的神秘力量，是一种指导性道德原则，它模糊了迷信与启蒙理性之间的界限。这种“同情”对詹姆斯·库克的最后一次航行有何启示？对于从这次航行中带回欧洲收藏品的人工制品，以及相应地将“欧洲”物体同时引入太平洋宇宙学，它会怎么说呢？关注这些对象（尤其是羽毛）的重要性，使我们能够探索“同情”如何统一和划分这些异构档案。