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)

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)