British Journal for the History of Science最新文献_第8页

'A method for safe transmission': the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club. “一种安全传输方法”:美国邮政显微俱乐部的显微镜载玻片。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000534

Lea Beiermann

{"title":"'A method for safe transmission': the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club.","authors":"Lea Beiermann","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000534","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1870s, microscopy societies began to proliferate in the United States. Most of these societies attracted microscopists from surrounding cities, but the American Postal Microscopical Club, modelled on the British Postal Microscopical Society, used the postal system to connect microscopists scattered across the country. Club members exchanged microscope slides and notes following a chain-letter system. The main objective of the club was to teach its members how to make permanent slides. Preparation and mounting methods required technical skill, which was, as even club members had to admit, difficult to learn without personal instruction. Yet members developed ways to share craft knowledge through the post. Drawing on the private notes of a member and published reports on the slides circulated, this paper challenges the widespread assumption that the generation of craft knowledge depended on the co-location of artisans. It argues that microscopists' knowledge of preparation methods was intertwined with their skill in building and navigating information infrastructures, and that by tracing these infrastructures we gain a better understanding of how craft knowledge travelled in the late nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000534","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39253331","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: 2

Adjusting to precarity: how and why the Roslin Institute forged a leading role for itself in international networks of pig genomics research. 适应不稳定:罗斯林研究所如何以及为什么在猪基因组学研究的国际网络中为自己树立了领导地位。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000686

James W E Lowe

{"title":"Adjusting to precarity: how and why the Roslin Institute forged a leading role for itself in international networks of pig genomics research.","authors":"James W E Lowe","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000686","url":null,"abstract":"From the 1980s onwards, the Roslin Institute and its predecessor organizations faced budget cuts, organizational upheaval and considerable insecurity. Over the next few decades, it was transformed by the introduction of molecular biology and transgenic research, but remained a hub of animal geneticists conducting research aimed at the livestock-breeding industry. This paper explores how these animal geneticists embraced genomics in response to the many-faceted precarity that the Roslin Institute faced, establishing it as a global centre for pig genomics research through forging and leading the Pig Gene Mapping Project (PiGMaP); developing and hosting resources, such as a database for genetic linkage data; and producing associated statistical and software tools to analyse the data. The Roslin Institute leveraged these resources to play a key role in further international collaborations as a hedge against precarity. This adoption of genomics was strategically useful, as it took advantage of policy shifts at the national and European levels towards funding research with biotechnological potential. As genomics constitutes a set of infrastructures and resources with manifold uses, the development of capabilities in this domain also helped Roslin to diversify as a response to precarity.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39506703","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: 3

R.A. Fisher, eugenics, and the campaign for family allowances in interwar Britain. R.A.费雪，优生学，以及两次世界大战之间英国家庭津贴运动。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000674

Alex Aylward

{"title":"R.A. Fisher, eugenics, and the campaign for family allowances in interwar Britain.","authors":"Alex Aylward","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000674","url":null,"abstract":"Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) is today remembered as a giant of twentieth-century statistics, genetics and evolutionary theory. Alongside his influential scientific contributions, he was also, throughout the interwar years, a prominent figure within Britain's eugenics movement. This essay provides a close examination of his eugenical ideas and activities, focusing particularly upon his energetic advocacy of family allowances, which he hoped would boost eugenic births within the more 'desirable' middle and upper classes. Fisher's proposals, which were grounded in his distinctive explanation for the decay of civilizations throughout human history, enjoyed support from some influential figures in Britain's Eugenics Society and beyond. The ultimate failure of his campaign, though, highlights tensions both between the eugenics and family allowances movements, and within the eugenics movement itself. I show how these social and political movements represented a crucial but heretofore overlooked context for the reception of Fisher's evolutionary masterwork of 1930, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, with its notorious closing chapters on the causes and cures of national and racial decline.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39504138","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

Is alcohol a tropical medicine? Scientific understandings of climate, stimulants and bodies in Victorian and Edwardian tropical travel. 酒精是热带药物吗?维多利亚和爱德华时代热带旅行中对气候、兴奋剂和身体的科学理解。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000649

Edward Armston-Sheret, Kim Walker

{"title":"Is alcohol a tropical medicine? Scientific understandings of climate, stimulants and bodies in Victorian and Edwardian tropical travel.","authors":"Edward Armston-Sheret, Kim Walker","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000649","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers a new perspective on historical understandings of the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body, by studying the way that British explorers of tropical Africa drank alcohol and wrote about drink between c.1850 and c.1910. We demonstrate that alcohol was simultaneously classified as a medicinal, a preventative and a pleasurable drink, shaped by competing medical theories, but that distinctions between these different roles were highly blurred. We also show how many explorers thought certain drinks helped to protect white bodies from the effects of tropical diseases. While popular amongst travellers, these views came under growing scrutiny in the latter part of the nineteenth century, reflecting both changing scientific views about the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body and the development of a much larger European presence in tropical Africa. However, even those who opposed tropical drinking often supported the use of other stimulants and viewed the tropics as uniquely dangerous. As such, the paper challenges the idea that the late nineteenth century marked a paradigm shift in scientific attitudes towards tropical environments, as much previous scholarship has suggested. At the same time, our examinations of explorers' descriptions of drinking by African people demonstrates how ideas about racial difference played an important role within medical understandings of alcohol. Overall, this paper examines the heterogeny of attitudes to alcohol to be found within tropical medicine and documents the continuities in approach shown between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39445028","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: 1

'Impossible to provide an accurate estimate': the interested calculation of the Ottoman public debt, 1875-1881. 不可能提供准确的估算"：1875-1881 年奥斯曼帝国公共债务的计算。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-10-08 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000637

Daniel A Stolz

引用次数: 0

'Ancient lore with modern appliances': networks, expertise, and the making of the Open Polar Sea, 1851-1853. “古老的爱与现代的设备”:网络，专业知识，和开放的极地海，1851年至1853年。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-09-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000522

Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund, John Woitkowitz

{"title":"'Ancient lore with modern appliances': networks, expertise, and the making of the Open Polar Sea, 1851-1853.","authors":"Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund, John Woitkowitz","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000522","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a transnational analysis of the campaigns for the organization of expeditions to the central Arctic region by the American explorer Elisha Kent Kane and the Prussian cartographer August Petermann between 1851 and 1853. By adopting a comparative approach, this study focuses on three interventions in the history of Arctic science and exploration: the construction of scientific expertise surrounding the relationship between the 'armchair' and the field, the role of transnational networks, and the significance of maps as travelling epistemic objects in the production of knowledge about the Arctic regions. In bringing both campaigns in conversation with each other, this article demonstrates that the histories of Kane's and Petermann's campaigns did not constitute isolated episodes but form part of a transnational nexus of imperial science and Arctic exploration in the nineteenth century. Moreover, based on research in libraries and archives in the United States, Germany and England, this study reconnects otherwise siloed collections and contributes new findings on the interpersonal networks of science and exploration. Finally, this article illustrates the importance of adopting comparative transnational approaches for understanding the fluid and reciprocal nature of Arctic science throughout the transatlantic world.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000522","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39207824","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: 1

'Hong Kong can afford a typhoon or two': British discussions of revolving storms. “香港承受得起一两个台风”:英国人对旋转风暴的讨论。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-09-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000236

Chi Chi Huang

{"title":"'Hong Kong can afford a typhoon or two': British discussions of revolving storms.","authors":"Chi Chi Huang","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000236","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the way in which the British press reported on typhoons that affected Hong Kong during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Typhoons were a significant element in the narration of the British Empire, featuring frequently in British accounts of their involvements in the Far East, where Hong Kong was its only colony. I suggest that these accounts need to be considered alongside the consolidation of the 'tropics' as a region in British perceptions, and in doing so, this article opens discussions of the study of tropicality to the consideration not just of climate, but also of the significance of singular weather events. This article argues that the cultural representations of typhoons in the British press were a tool of 'othering'. In particular, there were two significant shifts around the 1880s in these reports. First, the term 'typhoon' became tied to these types of storms that affected Hong Kong. Second, the stories that were told about typhoon events emphasized British heroism and colonial management. Both these shifts in reporting stripped away the weather wisdom that British sailors had earlier identified in the local population.","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000236","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38969027","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: 1

Framing Asian atmospheres: imperial weather science and the problem of the local c. 1880-1950. 构建亚洲大气:帝国气象科学和当地问题(1880-1950)。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-09-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000054

Fiona Williamson

{"title":"Framing Asian atmospheres: imperial weather science and the problem of the local c. 1880-1950.","authors":"Fiona Williamson","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000054","url":null,"abstract":"‘ It would be of the greatest importance to meteorology ’ , noted the editor of the Singapore Chronicle in 1829, ‘ if a set of hourly meteorological observations could be instituted at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Malacca, and some station on the elevated plains of Hindostan ’ . 1 Of course, the author ’ s comments speak from a uniquely imperial perspec-tive, whereby such observations would benefit the colonial service of – in this case – the British Empire, enabling enhanced knowledge of imperial atmospheres and the related economic and scientific benefits that this could bring. That meteorology was closely linked to empire and imperial control has long been acknowledged, as the ability to insti-tutionalize knowledge about an environment, and thus to define what constituted legit-imate knowledge, was ultimately a question of power. 2 In Asia, a long history of weather observation was gradually pushed into institutional scientific spaces after the 1860s, with key observatories in Tokyo, Shanghai, Manila and Hong Kong, and meteorological services in India and across the China coast. 3 This shift is attributed to the recog-nition that the science was critical to state building, especially for increasing agricultural yields; for safeguarding nascent aviation services, the latter particularly critical during the Asia-Pacific War; and for enabling better prediction systems for extremes of weather. 4","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39172776","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

Frontier atmosphere: observation and regret at Chinese weather stations in Tibet, 1939-1949. 边疆大气:1939-1949年中国西藏气象站的观测与反演。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-09-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000285

Mark E Frank

引用次数: 2

Revolutionary electricity in 1790: shock, consensus, and the birth of a political metaphor. 1790年的革命电力:震惊、共识和政治隐喻的诞生。

IF 0.8 1区哲学

British Journal for the History of Science Pub Date : 2021-09-01 DOI: 10.1017/S0007087421000297

Samantha Wesner

引用次数: 0