The British Journal for the History of Science - Current Issue

Volume 41 Issue 03

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:00:00 GMT

The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03

This leading international journal publishes scholarly papers and review articles on all aspects of the history of science. History of science is interpreted widely to include medicine, technology and social studies of science. BJHS papers make important and lively contributions to scholarship and the journal has been an essential library resource for more than thirty years. It is also used extensively by historians and scholars in related fields. A substantial book review section is a central feature. There are four issues a year, comprising an annual volume of over 600 pages.

Science, technique, technology: passages between matter and knowledge in imperial Chinese agriculture

Research Articles
FRANCESCA BRAY,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 319-344

Abstract
Many historians today prefer to speak of knowledge and practice rather than science and technology. Here I argue for the value of reinstating the terms science, techniques and technology as tools for a more precise analysis of governmentality and the workings of power. My tactic is to use these three categories and their articulations to highlight flows between matter and ideas in the production and reproduction of knowledge. In any society, agriculture offers a wonderfully rich case of how ideas, material goods and social relations interweave. In China agronomy was a science of state, the basis of legitimate rule. I compare different genres of agronomic treatise to highlight what officials, landowners and peasants respectively contributed to, and expected from, this charged natural knowledge. I ask how new forms of textual and graphic inscription for encoding agronomic knowledge facilitated its dissemination and ask how successful this knowledge proved when rematerialized and tested as concrete artefacts or techniques. I highlight forms of innovation in response to crisis, and outline the overlapping interpretative frameworks within which the material applications of Chinese agricultural science confirmed and extended its truth across space and time.

The enlightened microscope: re-enactment and analysis of projections with eighteenth-century solar microscopes

Research Articles
PETER HEERING,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 345-367

Abstract
Solar microscopes and their techniques attracted particular attention in the second half of the eighteenth century. This paper investigates the grounds for this interest. After a general introduction to the solar microscope, it discusses the use of original instruments to gain access to the visual culture of solar microscopes and the issues raised by these re-enactments. Experiences involved in this process serve as a basis for reassessing the original source materials. Thence emerges a different account of the meaning of the solar microscope in the eighteenth century and possible reasons for its popularity.

A witness account of solar microscope projections: collective acts integrating across personal and historical memory

Research Articles
ELIZABETH CAVICCHI,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 369-383

Abstract
The paper describes the author's witnessing of images projected from an eighteenth-century solar microscope made by John Dollond, now at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Peter Heering facilitated this session as part of his research on the solar microscope. A rectangular mirror, the length of a hand, mounted outside a museum window caught the sunlight and directed it indoors into the microscope's optical tube with its specimen. Astonishing detail was displayed in the resulting image projected onto a screen at human height. Crisply delineated scales patterned the image cast by a historical specimen of a butterfly wing. Observers interacted fluidly with these images in the very dark room. In sharing what we noticed, questioned and conjectured, we contributed to a temporary community. These participant interactions relate to Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's notion that, in the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle used witnessing as a . Here, the spanned participation across history. For example, Robert Hooke's 1665 Micrographia inspired Philip and Phylis Morrison's workshop during my college years and their collaboration with the Eames Office on a film depicting travel through , based on Kees Boeke's 1957 picture book. Personal memories were extended and informed by historical experiences, both for Robert Hooke's subsequent interpreters and for Peter Heering's participants.

Historical geographies of provincial science: themes in the setting and reception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Britain and Ireland, 1831– c. 1939

Research Articles
CHARLES WITHERS, REBEKAH HIGGITT, DIARMID FINNEGAN,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 385-415

Abstract
The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of science in various ways, principally by having annual meetings in different towns and cities throughout Britain and Ireland (and, from 1884, in Canada, South Africa and Australia). This paper considers how far the location of its meetings in different urban settings influenced the nature and reception of the association's activities in promoting science, from its foundation in 1831 to the later 1930s. Several themes concerning the production and reception of science are examined in different urban contexts. We consider the ways in which towns were promoted as venues for and centres of science. We consider the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions for science in attracting the association to different urban locations. The paper pays attention to excursions and to the evolution and content of the BAAS meeting handbook as a guide to the significance of the regional setting and to appropriate scientific venues. The paper considers the reception of BAAS meetings and explores how far the association's intentions for the promotion of science varied by location and by section within the BAAS. In examining these themes the paper extends existing knowledge of the association and contributes to recent work within the history of science which has emphasized the nature of science's making and reception and the mobility of scientific knowledge.

Accidents and opportunities: a history of the radio echo-sounding of Antarctica, 1958–79

Research Articles
SIMONE TURCHETTI, KATRINA DEAN, SIMON NAYLOR, MARTIN SIEGERT,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 417-444

Abstract
This paper explores the history of radio echo-sounding (RES), a technique of glaciological surveying that from the late 1960s has been used to examine Antarctica's sub-glacial morphology. Although the origins of RES can be traced back to two accidental findings, its development relied upon the establishment of new geopolitical conditions, which in the 1960s typified Antarctica as a continent devoted to scientific exploration. These conditions extended the influence of prominent glaciologists promoting RES and helped them gather sufficient support to test its efficiency. The organization and implementation of a large-scale research programme of RES in Antarctica followed these developments. The paper also examines the deployment of RES in Antarctic explorations, showing that its completion depended on the availability of technological systems of which RES was an integral part.

Jonathan Burt, Rat. Animal Series . London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Pp. 189. ISBN 1-86189-224-1. £12.95, $19.95 (paperback). Helen Macdonald, Falcon. Animal Series . London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Pp. 208. ISBN 1-86189-238-1. £12.95, $19.95 (paperback). Claire Preston, Bee. Animal Series . London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Pp. 206. ISBN 1-86189-256-X. £12.95, $19.95 (paperback).

Book Reviews
Tania Munz,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 445-447

Abstract

Charlotte Sleigh, Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. viii+302. ISBN 0-8018-8445-4. £36.50 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Richard W. Burkhardt,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 447-449

Abstract

Gregory Radick, The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xiv+577. ISBN 978-0-226-70224-7. $45.00, £23.50.

Book Reviews
Roger Smith,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 449-450

Abstract

Richard G. Delisle, Debating Humankind's Place in Nature 1860–2000: The Nature of Paleoanthropology . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Pp. vii+447. ISBN 0-13-1777390-9. $53.00 (paperback).

Book Reviews
Matthew R. Goodrum,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 451-452

Abstract

Henrika Kuklick (ed.) A New History of Anthropology . Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Pp. xiii+402. ISBN 978-0-631-22600-0. £22.99 (paperback).

Book Reviews
Efram Sera Shriar,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 452-453

Abstract

Diana Jeater, Law, Language, and Science: The Invention of the ‘Native Mind’ in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930 . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. ISBN 978-0-325-07108-4. Pp. xxii+274. £54.95, $94.95 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Howard Hsueh-Hao Chiang,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 453-455

Abstract

Felix Driver and Luciana Martins (eds.) Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xii+279. ISBN 0-226-16472-1. $25.00, £16.00 (paperback). David Arnold, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856 . Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2006. Pp. xiv+298. ISBN 0-295-98581-X. $50.00, £32.95 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Sujit Sivasundaram,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 455-456

Abstract

David Buisseret (ed.) The Oxford Companion to World Exploration . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Vol. 1. Pp. xxviii+478. Vol. 2. Pp. vii+501. ISBN 978-0-19-514922-7, 0-19-514922-X. £140.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Michael F. Robinson,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 457-458

Abstract

Bart Grob and Hans Hooijmaijers (eds.), Who Needs Scientific Instruments? Conference on Scientific Instruments and their Users, 20–22 October 2005 . Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 2006. Pp. 272. ISBN 906292-158-2. No price given (paperback, includes CD-ROM).

Book Reviews
Hester Higton,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 458-459

Abstract

A. D. Morrison-Low, Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. xvi+408. ISBN 978-0-7546-5758-3. £55.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Richard Dunn,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 459-460

Abstract

Jutta Schickore, The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740–1870 . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 320. ISBN 978-0-226-73784-3. $40.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Boris Jardine,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 460-462

Abstract

Laura J. Snyder, Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. x+386. ISBN 0-226-76733-7. $45.00, £23.50 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Thomas Dixon,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 462-464

Abstract

Bart Schultz, Henry Sidgwick – Eye of the Universe: An Intellectual Biography . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xx+858. ISBN 0-521-82967-4. £40.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Roy MacLeod,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 464-465

Abstract

Jennifer Tucker, Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. ix+294. ISBN 0-8018-7991-4. £36.50 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Phillip Prodger,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 465-467

Abstract

Ann B. Shteir and Bernard Lightman (eds.) Figuring It Out: Science, Gender, and Visual Culture . Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2006. Pp. xxx+386. ISBN 1-58465-602-6. $65.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Ludmilla Jordanova,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 467-469

Abstract

Gowan Dawson, Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii+282. ISBN 978-0-521-87249-2 £50.00, $90.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Frank M. Turner,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 469-470

Abstract

Mariano Artigas, Thomas F. Glick and Rafael A. Martínez, Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877–1902 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. 326. ISBN 0-8018-8389-7. £33.50, $50.00 (hardback).

Book Reviews
Juliana Adelman,
The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 471-472

Abstract

Books received

Books Received

The British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 41 Issue 03 , pp 473-476

Abstract