British Journal for the History of Science最新文献_第2页

An 'unholy' alchemy: the nineteenth-century European medico-scientific encounter with opium smoking and the circulation of knowledge. 一种“邪恶的”炼金术：19世纪欧洲医学科学与吸食鸦片和知识流通的相遇。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-05-20 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426102039

Matthew Perkins-McVey

{"title":"An 'unholy' alchemy: the nineteenth-century European medico-scientific encounter with opium smoking and the circulation of knowledge.","authors":"Matthew Perkins-McVey","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426102039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426102039","url":null,"abstract":"Today, the story of the opium trade is an almost archetypal representation of the social, economic and military power dynamics at play in the colonial world. But few, if any, are aware that the European encounter with Chinese opium smoking spurred a European interest in opium vapour therapy, or that its spirited uptake in European medicine inspired a research programme that spanned the continent for more than half a century. Opium smoking was intoxicating, something which experimental science suggested should be impossible, since the chemical properties of opium's active alkaloids all but precluded the possibility of vaporization. Recalling opium smoking's entrance into medical practice and the subsequent experimental interest in the chemical constitution of opium vapour, this paper reconstructs the history of European 'opium science'. In doing so, it realizes opium science as the site of competing definitions of the biomedical reality implicated in the experience of opium intoxication, one centred on the intoxicated experiences of the colonial subjects themselves. Far from being a simple story of exchange between centres and peripheries, it examines the polycentricity of knowledge circulation in the colonial world and the implacable agency of intoxication.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147976319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Meteorologists, sunspotters and journalists: the demise of long-range weather forecasting in the USSR, 1970s. 气象学家、太阳观测者和记者：20世纪70年代苏联长期天气预报的消亡。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-05-20 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426102027

Marc Elie

{"title":"Meteorologists, sunspotters and journalists: the demise of long-range weather forecasting in the USSR, 1970s.","authors":"Marc Elie","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426102027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426102027","url":null,"abstract":"This article contends that meteorology endured a severe crisis in the USSR in 1972. During a devastating drought this year, meteorology lost its reliability as a science able to forecast the weather many weeks and months in advance. Many professional users turned to an alternative weather forecaster, Anatolii D'iakov, who predicted the weather for the next season by observing the sun. The argument made here is threefold. First, the fundamental reason for the crisis in long-range weather forecasting lies in the disruption of a bond of trust between meteorologists and the government, built on unfulfilled prospects of rapid and sudden, but unrealistic, progress in long-range forecasting to help agriculturalists of the steppe regions. Meteorologists could not fulfil the high expectations put in them. Second, journalists covering rural matters were instrumental in extolling D'iakov's alternative forecasts and in lambasting 'official' meteorology; however, they did not succeed in convincing the leadership to purge forecasters and reorganize meteorology. The meteorologists preserved their autonomy to deal with D'iakov. Third, the article reflects on the consequences of the failure of long-term forecasting for the status of science within Soviet governance and ideology.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147976385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Linen, genotrophs and a mid-century bridge to Eastern genetics. 亚麻布，基因营养体和本世纪中叶通往东方遗传学的桥梁。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-05-05 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101940

Eric J Richards

{"title":"Linen, genotrophs and a mid-century bridge to Eastern genetics.","authors":"Eric J Richards","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101940","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1950s, Alan Durrant of the University College Wales began a series of experiments to investigate the inheritance of environmental effects in plants, forging an unexpected connection to the controversial hereditary theories of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Durrant's work relied heavily on a specific fibre flax variety, Stormont Cirrus, developed in the interwar period in the UK for linen production. I investigate how the exigencies of the UK linen industry, along with Durrant's training and institutional setting, formed the milieu that generated an unexpected outlier in British genetic scholarship during the Cold War. I supplement my text-based historical analysis by conducting experiments to re-examine the genetic constitution of the original Stormont Cirrus cultivar. These findings suggest that Durrant's creation of alternative 'genotroph' derivatives by treating Stormont Cirrus plants with different soil nutrient regimes likely resulted from selection of pre-existing genetic variation present in the incompletely inbred parental strain, rather than being an example of inherited environmental effects. Inverting Durrant's intention to interpret his results in the context of Lysenko's work, my historical analysis of Durrant's flax genotroph findings informs a reappraisal of one of the key experimental claims supporting Lysenko's environmentalist concepts of inheritance.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147844430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The politics of 'the politics of display': a nuclear-energy gallery, a science museum in the 1980s and a debate about patronage. “展示政治”的政治：20世纪80年代的核能画廊、科学博物馆和关于赞助的辩论。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-29 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101952

Harry Parker

{"title":"The politics of 'the politics of display': a nuclear-energy gallery, a science museum in the 1980s and a debate about patronage.","authors":"Harry Parker","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101952","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101952","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines a controversy over a nuclear-energy gallery at the Science Museum, London, in the early 1980s. It uses this case to explore the wider politicization of museums at this time, and thus the politicization of the display of science and technology. It argues that cultural changes in train since the 1960s, coupled with a museological turn towards 'social history' as the proper vehicle for exhibiting science and technology, led to the museum becoming newly subject to widespread critical scrutiny. That scrutiny had contradictory effects. On the one hand, it reinforced the image of the museum as a bastion of official culture and knowledge. On the other, it undermined this image, by exposing the ideological nature of the museum's authority. This double movement laid the groundwork for the crisis of confidence that culminated in the 'New Museology' of the later part of the decade. Attending to this controversy thus suggests a need to revise prevailing scholarship on the 'politics of display', which often takes for granted an overly straightforward connection between museums and power.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A science museum 'to rival South Kensington': historicizing the industrial city and galvanizing 'modern' science in post-war Manchester. 一座“与南肯辛顿相媲美”的科学博物馆：使这座工业城市历史化，并在战后的曼彻斯特激发“现代”科学。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-29 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087426101939

Erin Beeston

{"title":"A science museum 'to rival South Kensington': historicizing the industrial city and galvanizing 'modern' science in post-war Manchester.","authors":"Erin Beeston","doi":"10.1017/S0007087426101939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087426101939","url":null,"abstract":"This paper shows how the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (GMMSI) was shaped by actors' experiences with the history of science and technology. The museum began under the leadership of scientist-historians at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in the 1960s, where it was uniquely positioned to reflect contemporary histories of science, particularly framed around the concept of revolutions. This academic framing converged with long-held civic aspirations for a science museum in the city and cemented Manchester's historiographic position as the 'first industrial city'. Vivian Bowden, UMIST's principal, also explicitly aimed to educate future scientists whom he believed were key to overcoming the region's economic challenges. What is striking in this process is how perceptions of the past and contemporary views were integrated with vehement northern independence and determination to form a 'museum to rival South Kensington'. This paper concludes with the GMMSI's early 1980s relocation to Liverpool Road Station, where the museum became a wholly civic affair, beyond academia. Despite these changes, the belief that the past had a place in the education of future scientists laid the foundations for the later integration of an interactive science centre gallery in the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Science and the city: reviewing Naples, London and Lisbon. 科学与城市：回顾那不勒斯、伦敦和里斯本。

IF 1.2 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-04-24 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101593

Alexander Stoeger

引用次数: 0

How to create a discipline? Looking back at luminaries. 如何创建一个学科？回顾那些杰出人物。

IF 0.9 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101416

Veli Virmajoki

引用次数: 0

A family moss craze: learning, reading and skill development in a botanical and domestic network in early nineteenth-century England and Wales. 家庭苔藓热潮：19世纪早期英格兰和威尔士植物学和家庭网络中的学习、阅读和技能发展。

IF 0.9 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425000378

Brad Scott

{"title":"A family moss craze: learning, reading and skill development in a botanical and domestic network in early nineteenth-century England and Wales.","authors":"Brad Scott","doi":"10.1017/S0007087425000378","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0007087425000378","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1814 and 1826 four members of the family of Jane Talbot and her cousin William Henry Fox Talbot had an active and varied interest in the study of mosses, which included the collecting, drawing and naming of specimens. This article explores the textures of their developing practice of learning natural history, and considers their activities within the framework of the circulation of knowledge, their reading and skill development, and the networks that supported them. Their social status and connections provided access to the expertise of numerous British botanists, including Lewis Weston Dillwyn, William Jackson Hooker, and James Dalton, placing the family as a locus of knowledge (re)production and transmission. This work illustrates the pedagogical practices of an elite group as they engaged with botany in a domestic setting, and makes suggestions as to their motivations and stimulations, as well as the conditions that maintained or diminished their interest. At a time when mosses were little-studied even by professed botanists, it demonstrates how a family group including many young women filled their leisure pursuits with these small plants, and reveals how an extended family with no previous expertise in formal botany could be actors in early nineteenth-century knowledge exchange.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"41-57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144053818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Diagnosing the dead: post-mortem examinations and medical ship culture in the Royal Navy. 诊断死者：英国皇家海军的验尸和医疗船文化。

IF 0.9 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425101040

Manon C Williams

引用次数: 0

To write or not to write: the literary strategies of British civil engineers in the late eighteenth century. 写还是不写：18世纪后期英国土木工程师的文学策略。

IF 0.9 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087425000445

Ellen Packham

{"title":"To write or not to write: the literary strategies of British civil engineers in the late eighteenth century.","authors":"Ellen Packham","doi":"10.1017/S0007087425000445","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0007087425000445","url":null,"abstract":"In the latter half of the eighteenth century, British civil engineers strove to enhance their status and assert the identity of their developing profession. Alongside associational and visual cultures, one means of achieving a sense of community was through the formation of a shared literary culture. As a profession notorious for what Torrens described as 'papyrophobia', it is perhaps surprising that many engineers, in this period, read widely and wrote extensively. John Smeaton (1724-92), for example, valued good authorship and experimented widely with literary form. James Brindley (1716-72), his contemporary, wrote sparingly, but nevertheless generated a literary strategy in support of his projects. Other engineers, such as John Phillips (fl. 1785-1813), made use of their engineering background and of engineering literature to create alternative careers. By exploring how mid- to late eighteenth-century engineers wrote, in order to persuade and to educate others as well as to publicize, record and defend their professional decisions, this paper will show how their reputations were dependent on literary constructions as much as on physical ones.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":"59-75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144200370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0