What could be more curious than the eyes of underwater animals? What do they see in their alien, watery world? In the early twentieth century, there was unprecedented observation of underwater life forms using aquariums. Central to this article is an aquarium photograph of a scallop – scientifically known as Pecten – taken by scientist Francis Ward in collaboration with scientist, William Dakin. Through investigation of the image, the article first explains the story behind the generation of the image, then links the image to debates on the eyes of Pecten in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and lastly draws connections between the expressive dimensions of the image and modern art. Taking the eyes of scallops as a case study, the article addresses the expanding science of marine animals, technologies of underwater observation, and the impact of evolutionary biology, especially the perceived similarity of scallop eye and human eye, to modern thought. The argument is made that from 1900 to 1917 an interest in underwater animal vision and the creativity of nature created common ground between disparate figures in science, philosophy and art and that despite modernity’s concern for autonomy these disciplines became entangled and mutually informing.

还有什么比水下动物的眼睛更让人好奇的呢？他们在陌生的水世界里看到了什么？二十世纪初，使用水族箱观察水下生命形式的现象前所未有。这篇文章的核心是科学家弗朗西斯沃德与科学家威廉达金合作拍摄的一张扇贝的水族馆照片 - 科学上称为 Pecten。文章通过对图像的考察，首先阐释了图像产生背后的故事，然后将图像与亨利·柏格森哲学中关于佩克腾之眼的争论联系起来，最后将图像的表现维度与现代联系起来。艺术。以扇贝的眼睛为案例研究，文章阐述了海洋动物科学的发展、水下观察技术、以及进化生物学对现代思想的影响，尤其是扇贝眼和人眼的感知相似性。论点是，从 1900 年到 1917 年，对水下动物视觉和自然创造力的兴趣在科学、哲学和艺术领域的不同人物之间创造了共同点，尽管现代性关注自主性，但这些学科变得纠缠在一起并相互告知。