The ArgumentIt is often assumed that all sciences travel the path of increasing precision and quantification. It is also assumed that such processes transcend the boundaries of rival scientific disciplines. The history of the personal equation has been cited as an example: the “personal equation” was the name given by astronomers after Bessel to the differences in measured transit times recorded by observers in the same situation. Later in the nineteenth century Wilhelm Wundt used this phenomenon as a type for (...) his experiments on reaction times. For historians of psychology, this has been taken to be an exemplary case where quantified laboratory science rescued astronomy by showing that this was really a psychological phenomenon measurable only in complication experiments. This paper challenges this story. Astronomers neither ignored, nor despaired of, the personality problem. Instead, the managers of the great observatories developed a new chronometric regime of vigilant surveillance of subordinate observers. The astronomers' solution was thus intimately connected with social and material changes in their way of life: a division of labor in the observatories, a network of observing sites, a mechanization of observation. The paper documents these changes and then presents a study of one case where managers, amateurs, and psychologists clashed for authority over the personality problem. Measurement is given its meaning when situated in specific contexts of styles of work and institutions. Disciplines give meanings to values, and often resist attempts by others to redefine these meanings or to gain authority over measurement. Quantification is not a self-evident nor inevitable process in science's history, but possesses a remarkable cultural history of its own. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Scandinavian countries share a solid reputation as longstanding contributors to top level Arctic research. This received view, however, veils some deep-seated contrasts in the ways that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark have conducted research in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. In this paper it is argued that instead of focusing on the geographical determinism of science – the fact that the Arctic is close to, indeed part of, Scandinavian territories – we should look more closely at the geopolitics of (...) science to understand the differences and similarities between these three Nordic countries. Through case studies of, mainly, Swedish Arctic and North Atlantic glaciology in the 1920s through to the 1940s, and of Norwegian preparations in the 1950s for the International Geophysical Year 1957/58, the paper demonstrates how different styles of research – research agendas, methodological choices, collaborative patterns, international networks, availability of infrastructure, relations to politics and power – are conditioned on economic interests and strategic and geopolitical trajectories, either these are explicitly put in the forefront of scientific priorities as in the case of Norway in the 1950s, or when they are manifestly disregarded in the name of scientific internationalism, as in the case of Swedish glaciology. The case of Danish colonial science in Greenland is only cursorily drawn into this analysis but corroborates the overall thesis. The analysis of this wider science politics of Scandinavian circumpolar science is exercised against a brief introductory backdrop of Arctic science historiography. Its chief message is that the analysis of polar science applying modern theory and method of the social studies of science is comparatively recent and that the full potential of merging the literature of Arctic science and exploration with those of security, geopolitics, indigenous voices, and the politics of nationalism is yet to be realized. (shrink)

‘Hitherto want of accuracy and definiteness have often been brought as a charge against geology, and sometimes only with too much justice’, wrote Archibald Geikie in a review of Sir Roderick Murchison'sSiluria(1867). ‘We seem now to be entering, however, upon a new era, when there will be infused into geological methods and speculation, some of the precision of the exact sciences’. Geikie's judgement echoed an appeal made some thirty years earlier by William Hopkins (1793–1866) that the science of geology needed (...) to be ‘elevated’ from a level of ‘indeterminate generalities’ to a rank among the stricter physical sciences. This paper aims to analyse, in the context of broader trends favouring measurement and mathematics in British scientific practice, Hopkins' role in the promotion of dynamical geology as a major new complement to stratigraphical geology such that, for example, in the first edition of Geikie'sTextbook of Geology(1882) the dynamical and stratigraphical components each filled 376 pages. (shrink)

Rossbank functioned from 1840 to 1854 as one of a chain of British Colonial Observatories which combined with European and Asian observatories in the study of terrestrial magnetism. It was established in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Sir John Franklin, and Captain James Clark Ross, R.N., commanding H.M. ships Erebus and Terror. The history and operation of the Rossbank Observatory is related, its instruments described, and the results discussed.Biographical notes on the Observatory staff, with lists of (...) its archives and instruments are provided. A number of previously unpublished pictures show the Observatory in use and the surviving buildings and instruments today. (shrink)

This paper presents the data gathering of Matthew Fontine Maury at the U.S. Naval Observatory as pushing an epistemic boundary outside traditional laboratory walls. Maury's use and control of civilian navigators explicates the development of an astronomic epistemology deeply embedded in nineteenth century American society. In conclusion, following the movement of epistemic boundaries is offered as a guide to crucial moments in the development of a multifaceted modernity.

: In 1842, British astronomer Sir John Herschel wrote a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss seeking his advice about how to make data collection more efficient on the Magnetic Crusade, a large-scale initiative to study the earth's magnetic field. Surprisingly, even though Gauss had managed a similar initiative, he refused to give Herschel the advice he wanted, claiming that he needed to see Herschel's results before he could reply. Taking this miscommunication as a point of departure, this article traces the (...) cause of this miscommunication to differences in how each scientist viewed scientific training and the communicability of different kinds of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

(1984). Entstehung und Schicksal von Humboldts Magnetischen ‘Verein’ (1829–1834) im Zusammenhang mit seiner Rußlandreise. Annals of Science: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 57-86.

What makes any investigative field a scientific discipline? This article argues that disciplines are ever-changing frameworks within which scientific activity is organised. Moreover, disciplinarity is not a yes or no proposition: scientific activities may achieve degrees of identity development. Degree of consensus is the key, and consensus on many questions (conceptual, methodological, institutional, and social) varies among sciences. Lastly, disciplinary development is non-teleological. Disciplines pass through no regular stages on their way from immature to mature status, designations articulated within the (...) rhetoric of discipline formation. Scientists assemble disciplines using many elements: phenomena, methods, instruments, theories, analytical techniques, and institutional tools such as journals, government bureaus, and university positions. Scientists created geophysics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through such a combination. Whether geophysics became a discipline depends on how discipline is defined. (shrink)

The usual problems of measurement and its meaning are complicated and magnified when the object of study is in principle and in fact inaccessible. When a phenomenon occurs in a place where our instruments cannot reach, what can the relation between the instrument, its reading, and the phenomenon be? This essay asks how researchers have addressed questions about inaccessible processes of Earth's magnetic field on the surface, at the edge of space and under its surface. This case takes us beyond (...) simple contrasts of inductive and deductive methods, or field sciences versus basic sciences, to a messier, more nuanced view of inherently complex sciences. The article focuses on investigations of Earth's magnetism and electricity, but its perspectives are applicable to many areas of recent science. (shrink)

(1984). Weather foreasting and the development of meteorological theory at the Paris Observatory, 1853–1878. Annals of Science: Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 359-382.

Historians of science have shown little interest in meteorology and, in Britain at least, have almost totally ignored the development of meteorological institutions. The Meteorological Office itself has found some mention at times such as its supposed centenary in 1955, but even then the interest has come mainly from meteorologists writing for the delectation of their fellows. This neglect is surprising because the story of the Office contains much to reward the historian. Its very formation as a governmental scientific institution (...) in 1854 supports arguments against the popular concept of mid-nineteenth century Britain as a cauldron of unbridled laissez-faire; the role it adopted in developing practical usages for science brought it into conflict with members of the academic scientific establishment; its later transition from an inaugural period as a department of the Board of Trade to a second phase under the control of a committee appointed by the Royal Society, with consequent changes in the methods of financing and administration, gives useful insights into the contemporary attitudes of government officials towards public expenditure on science; and its first head, Robert FitzRoy, was himself a man of such remarkable interest and complexity as to render the subject worthy of investigation on that count alone. (shrink)