British Journal for the History of Science最新文献

{"title":"The Anthropocene & the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability.","authors":"Emily Hayes","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000418","url":null,"abstract":"With The Anthropocene & the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability Carolyn Merchant, professor emerita of environmental history, philosophy and ethics at the University of California, Berkeley, aims to deepen understandings of the mutual shaping of the Anthropocene and environmental humanities. The latter, the author claims, has devoted less attention than economics, politics and historical studies to the apprehended environmental issues and climate change. The intended readership for this work needs to be stated straight up. Although written for ‘an educated public’ of reading clubs, ‘undergraduate courses and graduate seminars’ (p. xi), The Anthropocene & the Humanities read, to me, like a high-schooland early undergraduate-level take on human-made climate change, industrial capitalist economies and their depictions in art and literature. The work’s geographical bias, by no means an inherent fault, should have been flagged up; the perspective it is written from, and the putative readership it is intended for, are North American. This is because the aforementioned undergraduates are the sorts of students who, in the US, study in liberal-arts colleges or take comparative-literature courses whilst intending to pursue science majors. Such constituencies have shaped the choices Merchant has made. The intention of this book is to demonstrate how ‘the concept of the Anthropocene goes beyond earlier concepts and periodizations such as preindustrial, colonial, industrial, modern and postmodern by presenting a clear and forceful characterization of the future crisis humankind faces’ (p. xi) and to illustrate its impact upon literature, art and philosophy, and to a lesser extent the law. The six short chapters are scaled for the designated readership. The narrative is paced to allow for non-expert readers to absorb this important argument. The temporal scope of the book ranges from circa the sixth century BC to the present. Its spatial scope is predominantly northern-hemisphere and anglophone. Chapter 1 surveys the definition of the Anthropocene formulated by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer and the key figures and researchers who have advanced various conceptual terms inspired by the former. The book includes black-and-white images of the theorists whose ideas are discussed, from Donna Haraway to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Naomi Klein, Ian Angus, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Jason W. Moore. However, Greta Thunberg is missing from this line-up in a work purportedly aimed at younger readers. Surely she has impacted imaginations and the national environmental movements of the US? The next chapter details shifts in the spatial, scalar, social and material geographies of energy. Merchant steers us towards the topic of steam power, where we segue from","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":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39486534","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}

{"title":"Anticipating the monsoon: the necessity and impossibility of the seasonal weather forecast for South Asia, 1886-1953.","authors":"Sarah Carson","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000194","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the most controversial of the activities of the India Meteorological Department (IMD): long-term seasonal forecasting for the South Asian subcontinent. Under the pressure of recurrent famines, in 1886 the imperial IMD commenced annual issue of monsoon predictions several months in advance, focused on one variable: rainfall. This state service was new to global late nineteenth-century meteorology, attempted first and most rigorously in India. Successive IMD leaders adapted the forecast in light of scientific and infrastructural developments, continuously revising the underlying methods of its production. All methods failed to achieve accurate prevision. Nevertheless, the imperatives of economic administration, empire and public demand compelled IMD scientists to continue annual publication of this unreliable product. This article contends that the seasonal forecast is best understood as an enduring ritual of good governance in a monsoonal environment. Through analysis of newspaper controversies, it suggests that although the seasonal forecast was the most compelling justification for the IMD's imperial and global importance, its limitations undercut popular trust in modern meteorology. Finally, this case illustrates the centrality of 'tropical meteorology' to the historical development of modern atmospheric science.</p>","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/S0007087421000194","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38948031","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}

{"title":"Just doing their job: the hidden meteorologists of colonial Hong Kong <i>c.</i>1883-1914.","authors":"Fiona Williamson","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000182","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article investigates the contribution made by indigenous employees to the work of the Hong Kong Observatory from its inception and into the early twentieth century. As has so often been the case in Western histories of science, the significance of indigenous workers and of women in the Hong Kong Observatory has been obscured by the stories of the government officials and observatory director(s). Yet without the employees, the service could not have functioned or grown. While the glimpses of their work and lives are fleeting, often only revealed in minor archival references, this article seeks to interrogate these sources to make these workers' lives visible and to offer an examination of everyday working relationships at this place and point in time. It focuses on three areas. First, an exploration of who these workers were, and the role they played at the observatory. Second, an investigation of their contribution to the nascent science of meteorology. Third, an examination of available evidence - levels of high staff turnover, complaints, instances of foot dragging, or working to rule, as well as the tenacity to continue for years under difficult working conditions - to demonstrate the ability of workers to reject or to negotiate with colonial/patriarchal authority. In profiling their stories, this article will add to the literature examining the lives of scientific workers and their contributions to science, the everyday cultural and social contexts of colonial meteorology, and the role of ordinary men and women in producing meteorological knowledge at this time.</p>","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/S0007087421000182","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38906072","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}

{"title":"Revolutions in the head: Darwin, Malthus and Robert M. Young - CORRIGENDUM.","authors":"James A Secord","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000273","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000273","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38974385","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}

{"title":"The Society of Astrologers (<i>c.</i>1647-1684): sermons, feasts and the resuscitation of astrology in seventeenth-century London.","authors":"Michelle Pfeffer","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000029","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Before the Royal Society there was the Society of Astrologers (c.1647-1684), a group of around forty practitioners who met in London to enjoy lavish feasts, listen to sermons and exchange instruments and manuscripts. This article, drawing on untapped archival material, offers the first full account of this overlooked group. Convinced that astrology had been misunderstood by the professors who refused to teach it and the preachers who railed against it, the Society of Astrologers sought to democratize and legitimize their art. In contrast to the received view of seventeenth-century London astrologers, which emphasizes their bitter interrelationships, this article draws attention instead to their endeavours to mount a united front in defence of astrology. The article locates the society's attempts to promote astrological literacy within broader contemporary programmes to encourage mathematical education. Unlike other mathematical arts, however, astrology's religious credibility was an area of serious concern. The society therefore commissioned the delivery and publication of apologetic sermons that justified astrology on the basis of its sacred history. In this context, the legitimacy of astrology was more a religious than a scientific question. The society's public relations campaign ultimately failed, however, and its members disbanded in the mid-1680s. Not only were they mounting a rearguard action, but also they built their campaign on out-of-date historical arguments.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25478751","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}

{"title":"Managing the observatory: discipline, order and disorder at Greenwich, 1835-1933.","authors":"Scott Alan Johnston","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (1835-1933) which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such disorder and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: (1) the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; (2) the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and (3) the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25505690","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}

{"title":"Genes go digital: <i>Mendelian Inheritance in Man</i> and the genealogy of electronic publishing in biomedicine.","authors":"Michael F McGovern","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000224","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mendelian Inheritance in Man (MIM), a computerized catalogue of human genetic disorders authored and maintained by cardiologist and medical genetics pioneer Victor A. McKusick, played a major part in demarcating between a novel biomedical science and the eugenic projects of racial betterment which existed prior to its emergence. Nonetheless, it built upon prior efforts to systematize genetic knowledge tied to individuals and institutions invested in eugenics. By unpacking the process of digitizing a homespun cataloguing project and charting its development into an online database, this article aims to illuminate how the institution-building efforts of one individual created an 'information order' for accessing genetic information that tacitly shaped the norms and priorities of the field toward the pursuit of specific genes associated with discernible genetic disorders. This was not by design, but rather arose through negotiation with the catalogue's users; it accommodated further changes as biomedical research displaced the Mendelian paradigm. While great effort was expended toward making sequence data available to investigators during the Human Genome Project, MIM was largely taken for granted as a 'legacy system', McKusick's own labour of love. Drawing on recent histories of biomedical data, the article suggests that the bibliographical work of curation and translation is a central feature of value production in the life sciences meriting attention in its own right.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000224","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38999992","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}

{"title":"<i>Priorities in Medical Research</i>: elite dynamics in a pivotal episode for British health research.","authors":"Stephen M Davies","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000042","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Priorities in Medical Research (PMR) was published in 1988 by a select committee of the House of Lords. The report ushered in an era of NHS research and development (R & D) that lasted from 2001 to 2006. The inquiry's origins lay in concerns about academic medicine in the United Kingdom, yet PMR gave relatively little attention to this subject. Instead the report focused critically on the disconnect between the Department of Health and the NHS in R & D. This, the committee argued, had led to the neglect of research into health services and public health. To sidestep the report's unwelcome proposal for a National Health Research Agency, the department eventually grafted R & D management onto structures created as part of wider NHS reforms. The Medical Research Council successfully pursued a strategy of keeping the committee's attention away from sensitive aspects of its own programme. The final focus of PMR was shaped by an alignment between committee members with an industrial view of research and champions of health services research. The actions of the various actors involved are interpreted using elite models of the state, and the applicability of these models is critically examined.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25507478","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}

{"title":"'Seeing with one's own eyes' and speaking to the mind: a history of the Wilson cloud chamber in the teaching of physics.","authors":"Eugenio Bertozzi","doi":"10.1017/S0007087421000261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000261","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1911 the Wilson cloud chamber opened new possibilities for physics pedagogy. The instrument, which visualized particles' tracks as trails of condensed vapour, was adopted by physicists to pursue frontier research on the Compton effect, the positron and the transmutation of atomic nuclei. But as the present paper will show, Wilson's instrument did not just open up new research opportunities, but the possibility of developing a different kind of teaching. Equipped with a powerful visualization tool, some physicists-teachers employed Wilson's instrument to introduce their students to a wide range of phenomena and concepts, ranging from the behaviour of clouds to Einstein's photon, the wave-particle duality and the understanding of the nucleus. This paper uses the notes, books and prototypes of these pioneering physicists-teachers to compose a pedagogical history of the Wilson cloud chamber, documenting an episode of immense ingenuity, creativity and scientific imagination.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087421000261","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38969025","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}

{"title":"Unfriendly guardians: India's first nuclear leadership change in 1966.","authors":"Ji Yeon-Jung","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000618","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article, which focuses on the political decision making around the leadership of India's Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), shows how this process both decentralized scientific authority in India and led to changes in India's nuclear programme. New evidence presented from the deliberations of the Prime Minister's Secretariat (PMS) shows that Vikram Sarabhai, appointed chairman of the AEC in 1966, following the sudden death of the previous leader, Homi Bhabha, was the favoured candidate from the start of the process. His view on India's nuclear programme contrasted sharply with that of his predecessor, but his authority was protected, in part, from external challenge by the jurisdictional decisions made by the PMS. This article argues that the ambiguity inherent in India's developing nuclear programme was not the result of the apprehension of external threat, but the result of internal tensions within the relevant institutions, which are both revealed and (partially) resolved by the appointment process for the new chair.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000618","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25380916","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}