Introduction: Instruments in the History of Science

Helden, Albert Van; Hankins, Thomas L.

doi:10.1086/368726

Cited by 84 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…It came to be so precisely because of the association with advances in method and regulation of procedure as devices like the thermometer, the chronometer and the barometer became capable of extending human observational capacities in measuring natural phenomena according to standardised criteria (Bourguet et al 2002). Historians of technology may not agree upon an exact definition for ‘scientific instrument’ (van Helden and Hankins 1993; Warner 1990). But they do agree that such instruments helped confer epistemic authority upon the user and the science, and that in their manufacture, usage and institutional association there are important histories to be disclosed (Bennett 1987; Bud and Cozzens 1992; Turner 1983), even for individual types of scientific instruments and their associated operational practices – for example, for the barometer (Knowles Middleton 2003), or thermometry (Chang 2004; Taub 2011).…”

Section: Regulating Procedures: Method Scientific Instruments and Mamentioning

confidence: 99%

Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth‐century British geography

Withers

2012

Trans Inst British Geog

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The paper explores the promotion of method in nineteenth-century British geography. Attention is paid to the emphasis accorded scientific instruments in a period when scientific subjects were, in practice and in personnel, 'disciplining' themselves. The role ascribed to scientific instruments and method is examined with reference to the work in the Royal Geographical Society of Julian R. Jackson and his What to observe, or the traveller's remembrancer (1841), and William Hamilton's essay on geographical methods in John Herschel's Manual of scientific enquiry (1849). These works are further explored with reference to two related texts, the Society's Hints to travellers (Raper and Fitzroy 1854) and Francis Galton's The art of travel (1855). The paper for the first time brings together evidence for the place of scientific instruments within geography's methodological pronouncements with scholarship in the history of technology and the history of science. In doing so, the paper highlights the importance of critical histories of geography's methods, instruments and associated practices. The conclusion addresses the implications of such research for providing yet richer histories of geography that might address not just the subject's cognitive content and institutional context but matters of epistemological procedure, moral conduct and authorial regimen in relation to precision instrumentation.

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Section: Regulating Procedures: Method Scientific Instruments and Mamentioning

confidence: 99%

Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth‐century British geography

Withers

2012

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…Historians of technology have examined particular instrument types (Dunn, ), instruments as quotidian devices measuring geophysical phenomena during terrestrial exploration (Dunn, ; Goodman, ) and hydrographical survey (Barford, ), or enumerated technological developments in relation to particular needs (Bennett, ) and periods (De Clerq, ; Turner, , ). Historians of science – some initially cautious about what, exactly, a “scientific instrument” was (Van Helden & Hankins, ; Warner, ) – have re‐engaged with instruments: with their use (Taub, ); their biographies as scientific objects (Daston, , ); with the epistemological consequences of breakage (Baker, ; Schaffer, ); and how they mobilise “data” into commonplace “fact” (Latour, ; Latour, , pp. 24–79; Rheinberger, ).…”

Section: Instruments At Work – Toward An Instrument Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography and “thing knowledge”: Instrument epistemology, failure, and narratives of 19th‐century exploration

Withers

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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The paper examines the relationships between instrument epistemology, failure, and textual authority with reference to the place of scientific instruments in published narratives of 19th-century exploration. The paper draws on Baird's work on instrument epistemology and "semantic ascent" and Gooday's work on failure and on the morality of measurement. Its empirical focus comes from examination of RGS manuscript AP 52, a list of instruments provided by the RGS for 31 explorers in the period c.1877 to c.1883. Instruments are shown to (do) work in the field, even as explorers admitted to failure, in the devices and in themselves. Narrative accounts, often compiled elsewhere, obscure the contingent nature of instruments' use. The findings have implications for assessing the agency of instruments in exploration, instrument epistemology, and narrative inscription, and for understanding failure in geographical work. K E Y W O R D S exploration, failure, instrument epistemology, instruments, publication, thing knowledge | INTRODUCTIONThat the history of science and increasingly the history of modern culture is indeed a history of instruments and their intelligentand sometimes not so intelligentuse should be well known. We need to take notice. (Baird, 2004, p. xv) This paper examines the place of scientific instruments in published narratives of 19th-century exploration and the relationships between instrument epistemology, failure, and textual authority. Studies of the relationship between exploration and authorship identify several stages between the act of exploration and the production of printed narratives about it. These involved in-the-field note taking and in-situ alteration; later redaction elsewhere; post-exploration appeals to memory when in-situ writing proved inadequate; and the role of editors and publishers in revising the content, even the chronology of exploration, to suit perceived audience demand (Bouguet et al.

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“…However, this was not always the case: previously, in the XVIII century, in the search for scientific fact, presented in the form of natural laws, such devices were seen as links between knowledge dependent on the weakness of the senses and knowledge governed by the knowledge of method. An important part of the scientific revolution was the creation of an experimental method and the production of conventions on the proper use of the instruments (Van Helden & Hankins, 1994).…”

Section: The Scientific Apparatus In Demonstration Rooms: What Does Imentioning

confidence: 99%

As aulas de demonstração científica e o ensino da observação

Braghini¹

2017

RBHE

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The article presents some pedagogical experiences aimed at teaching science, from the use of scientific objects in demonstration classes so as to understand the meaning of 'teaching of observation'. We sought to understand the pedagogical role of demonstration classes which use scientific objects, aimed at promoting a visual education within scientific representations that placed vision, experimentation and demonstration as related actions, i.e. a process of visual education suited to the education of science. For this reason, studies were performed on photographs of scientific demonstration classes of the Centre de Ressources et de Recherche du Musée National de l'Èducation in Rouen, scientific objects of the Archdiocesan Marist College School Museum, and various other documents.

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Introduction: Instruments in the History of Science

Cited by 84 publications

References 3 publications

Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth‐century British geography

Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth‐century British geography

Geography and “thing knowledge”: Instrument epistemology, failure, and narratives of 19th‐century exploration

As aulas de demonstração científica e o ensino da observação

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