In Pursuit of Accurate Timekeeping: Liverpool and Victorian Electrical Horology

This paper explores how nineteenth-century Liverpool became such an advanced city with regard to public timekeeping, and the wider impact of this on the standardisation of time. From the mid-1840s, local scientists and municipal bodies in the port city were engaged in improving the ways in which accurate time was communicated to ships and the general public. As a result, Liverpool was the first British city to witness the formation of a synchronised clock system, based on an invention by Robert Jones. His method gained a considerable reputation in the scientific and engineering communities, which led to its subsequent replication at a number of astronomical observatories such as Greenwich and Edinburgh. As a further key example of developments in time-signalling techniques, this paper also focuses on the time ball established in Liverpool by the Electric Telegraph Company in collaboration with George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal. This is a particularly significant development because, as the present paper illustrates, one of the most important technologies in measuring the accuracy of the Greenwich time signal took shape in the experimental operation of the time ball. The inventions and knowledge which emerged from the context of Liverpool were vital to the transformation of public timekeeping in Victorian Britain.     

Pluralism and anarchism in quantum physics: Paul Feyerabend's writings on quantum physics in relation to his general philosophy of science

This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend's philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics.In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend's perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend's arguments for theoretical pluralism and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics.However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr's work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science.     

Re-examining the impact of European astronomy in seventeenth-century China: a study of Xue Fengzuo’s system of thought and his integration of Chinese and Western knowledge

ABSTRACT

During the late Ming and early Qing period, Jesuit missionaries introduced European science into China, and thereby profoundly influenced the later development of Chinese astronomy. Not only did European astronomy become the official system of the Qing dynasty, but the traditional way to ‘attain up above’ by connecting the study of astronomy and Yi learning gradually fell into disuse. However, the astronomers in this period expressed different views on these two processes. As one of the most important early Qing astronomers, Xue Fengzuo’s case presents a distinctive and important example. Firstly, under the influences of both Chinese tradition and European science, Xue Fengzuo rebuilt the way to ‘attain up above’ based on his three-fold ‘calendrical learning’, i.e. calendrical astronomy, astrology and related pragmatic applications, through which he could realize the highest Confucian ideal. Secondly, he integrated Chinese and Western knowledge for all three aspects of his ‘calendrical learning’, instead of ceding the dominant position to Western methods. From Xue Fengzuo’s example, many of the complex effects of the encounter between different cultures and the process of knowledge transfer can be revealed.     

Pensions for ‘Cultivators of Science’

The occasional (and belated) concern of the British Government with science in the nineteenth century is a matter of potential interest to historians of science, yet many previous studies have tended to range over a variety of different aspects of the question. There have been too many vague allusions to financial support as ‘money for science’ in general. It is time that particular parts of the problem were unpacked. For example, the award of money (from the 1820s) to pay a few people of independent means for apparatus was quite distinct from the provision (from the 1830s) of an occasional pension. Even then, to speak of ‘pensions’ uncovers unfortunate ambiguities. For too long science in Britain was regarded as no more than a private hobby for the well-to-do. As late as 1856 an official government statement seemed to make this attitude official. The English attitude to pensions differed remarkably from the French, who established a precedent in the reward of savants, sometimes quoted enviously by British men of science. In 1837 Robert Peel virtually admitted that, in awarding pensions to ‘cultivators of science’, he was following the French practice. It may also be useful to emphasise the contrast between the English (often led by Cambridge professors) and the Scots, mostly from Edinburgh, mainly represented here by Whewell and Brewster, respectively. Babbage had a different role in this story from that usually told. A large part in supporting men of science of modest means could have been played by the British Association for the Advancement of Science but it consistently refused to do so, although it supported an elite among its own members.     

Maligned for mathematics: Sir Thomas Urquhart and his Trissotetras

Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660), celebrated for his English translation of Rabelais’ Gargantua et Pantagruel, has earned some notoriety for his eccentric, putatively incomprehensible early book on trigonometry The Trissotetras (1645). The Trissotetras was too impractical to succeed in its own day as a textbook, since it lacked both trigonometric tables and sample calculations. But its current bad reputation is based on literary authors’ amplifications of the verdict prefaced to its 19th century reprinting by one mathematician, William Wallace, who lacked the background to appreciate the book’s historical context. Considering that context (including seventeenth century ‘copious’ prose, and medieval logic and ‘art of memory’), the bad reputation is undeserved: the book is mathematically clear, clever (e.g. in superimposing 16 problems into one diagram), and complete. The Trissotetras may thus be viewed as simply one more of Urquhart’s polymathic projects and involvements – which included education, rise of the middle class, religious and class conflicts, development of science and mathematics, search for patronage, universal language construction, and development of English prose – which serve to make him a lively and instructive intellectual Everyman for his time.     

The publication strategies of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848): negotiating national and linguistic boundaries in chemistry

SUMMARY

This article follows the publication strategies of the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848). It focuses on the role of language and translation in Berzelius' efforts to strengthen his own reputation, and that of Swedish science. As an author and editor, Berzelius encouraged the translation of his own works into several languages, while endeavouring to preserve the status of Swedish as a language of scientific publication in the face of French, and increasingly German and English, dominance. Reforming the Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and launching several new scientific periodicals, Berzelius also attempted to influence the publication practices in other countries.

Recent scholarship on the history of scientific publication has drawn attention to the practical difficulties of determining and getting hold of the relevant publications in one's field, the ‘malleability’ of the journal medium, and the common practice of reprinting and summarising papers published elsewhere. Berzelius’ publication strategies highlight translation – time-consuming, unreliable and problematic in terms of authorisation and ownership – as one aspect of the wider problem of communicating across national and linguistic boundaries. Berzelius' struggles with the practicalities of communicating across borders in times of war, the choice of language and its consequences, and national standards of publication, demonstrate the importance of a transnational perspective on the history of scientific publication.     

The American Philosophical Society and the rise of astronomy in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century

Early geological investigations in the St David's area (Pembrokeshire) are described, particularly the work of Murchison. In a reconnaissance survey in 1835, he regarded a ridge of rocks at St David's as intrusive in unfossiliferous Cambrian; and the early Survey mapping (chiefly the work of Aveline and Ramsay) was conducted on that assumption, leading to the publication of maps in 1845 and 1857. The latter represented the margins of the St David's ridge as ‘Altered Cambrian’. So the supposedly intrusive ‘syenite’ was regarded as younger, and there was no Precambrian. These views were challenged by a local doctor, Henry Hicks, who developed an idea of the ex-Survey palaeontologist John Salter that the rocks of the ridge were stratified and had formed a Precambrian island, round which Cambrian sediments (now confirmed by fossil discoveries) had been deposited. Hicks subsequently proposed subdivision of his Precambrian into ‘Dimetian’, ‘Pebidian’, and (later) ‘Arvonian’, and he attempted correlations with rocks in Shropshire, North Wales, and even North America, seeking to develop the neo-Neptunist ideas of Sterry Hunt. The challenge to the Survey's work was countered in the 1880s by the Director General, Geikie, who showed that Hicks's idea of stratification in the Dimetian was mistaken. A heated controversy developed, several amateur geologists, supported by a group of Cambridge Sedgwickians, forming a coalition of ‘Archaeans’ against the Survey. Geikie was supported by Lloyd Morgan. Attention focused particularly on Ogof Lle-sugn Cave and St Non's Arch, with theory/controversy-ladenness of observations evident on both sides. Evidence from an eyewitness student record of a Geological Society meeting reveals the ‘sanit`ized’ nature of the official summary of the debate in QJGS. Field mapping early in the twentieth century by J. F. N. Green allowed a compromise consensus to be achieved, but Green's evidence for unconformity between the Cambrian and the Dimetian, obtained by excavation, can no longer be verified, and his consensual history of the area may need revision. Unconformity between the Cambrian and the Pebidian tuffs is not in doubt, however, and Precambrian at St David's is accepted. The study exhibits features of geological controversy and the British geological community in the nineteenth century. It also furnishes a further instance of the great influence of Murchison in nineteenth-century British geology and the side-effects of his controversy with Sedgwick.     

The early history of ship magnetism: The Airy-Scoresby controversy

With the advent of iron-built ships in the early nineteenth century the problem of managing a magnetic compass on board presented considerable difficulty. Prominent among the early scientists who tackled the problem were George Biddell Airy and William Scoresby. Airy had provided a mechanical system, employing correctors in the form of steel magnets and wrought iron masses, by which the ship's magnetic field at the compass position is neutralized. He based his system on the concept that the magnetism acquired by an iron ship during her construction remained with the ship throughout her life. Scoresby, on the other hand, thought differently. After having conducted a thorough and systematic series of experiments on iron plates and bars, he concluded that the magnetic character of an iron ship is liable to sudden and unexpected change. Scoresby argued, therefore, that Airy's system was defective and, indeed, dangerous. The aim of this paper is to discuss the two views which brought Airy and Scoresby into a conflict which is documented in a series of letters to the editor of The Athenaeum.     

Tracings of the north of Europe: Robert Chambers in search of the Ice Age

Scottish publisher and naturalist Robert Chambers pursued an amateur interest in geology through much of his life. His early measurements of raised beaches in Scotland earned him membership in the Geological Society of London in 1844, a recognition much appreciated by the anonymous author of the ‘scandalous’ Vestiges published the same year. Although familiar with emerging ice age theories, Chambers remained with most British geologists a sceptic through the 1840s, even after a trip to the glaciers of the Alps in 1848, which nevertheless prepared him for the turning point, which came in 1849 during an extensive field trip in Norway and Sweden. Here a wealth of observations left him in no doubt that vast glaciers had formerly covered Scandinavia, polishing cliffs, scouring striations, depositing old moraines and erratic boulders. This also led him to a new glacial reading of the British landscape, and with the ardent conviction of a fresh convert he became one of the most vocal supporters of glacial theory in Britain in the 1850s at a time when the iceberg drift theory for boulder transport was still favoured by most prominent British geologists. While Chambers through his popular Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal communicated his travels and ice age vision to a wide audience, and also pointed out ice age evidence on guided excursions around Edinburgh, he did not enter this new vision into subsequent editions of Vestiges, probably in order not to reveal its author. This paper explores Chambers’s contributions to the ice age debate, his field trips and the genesis of his convictions, and evaluates his impact on the scientific debate.     

Marking out a disciplinary common ground: The role of chemical pedagogy in establishing the doctrine of affinity at the heart of British chemistry

This paper presents a case study that contributes to the current debate among historians of chemistry concerning the role and influence of pedagogy in science. Recently, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and her colleagues concluded that in nineteenth-century France, ‘textbooks played an important role in discipline building and in creating theories’.1 ¹A. Garcia-Belmar, B. Bensaude-Vincent and J.R. Bertomeu-Sánchez, ‘The Power of Didactic Writings: French Chemistry Textbooks of the Nineteenth Century’, in Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by D. Kaiser (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 243. Developing this idea further, this paper examines the dissemination of knowledge through face-to-face chemical lectures, showing that the influence of pedagogical strategy on theoretical content of the science is far from negligible. The pedagogy of William Cullen was essentially responsible for the prevalence of the doctrine of affinity in British chemistry from the 1760s onwards. Cullen used his affinity theory as a pedagogical tool that to a large extent defined his discipline, and the pedagogical pyramid that he headed similarly ensured that the doctrine would remain at the heart of British chemistry. From a pedagogical tool, the doctrine of affinity was transformed over time into a chemical tool, offering British chemists a disciplinary common ground that both set and reinforced the boundaries to their discipline.     

Essay Review: The Historicity of Sound and Hearing

This paper investigates the extent of overseas migration by British chemists over the period 1887–1971. Notwithstanding the ‘brain drain’ alarms of the 1960s, overseas employment was characteristic of some 19% of British chemists’ careers throughout our period, though its nature changed considerably. Our study examines the overseas employment histories of four cohorts of members of the [Royal] Institute of Chemistry in the ‘Chemists’ Database’ at the Open University. Those employed abroad were not only highly qualified but also both geographically mobile and occupationally versatile. Over the period, the pattern of chemists’ migration was broadly similar to that of British migration trends more generally. Except in the interwar years, chemists’ rate of migration was relatively constant. However, the length of time they spent abroad declined markedly over the period: long-term migration became less characteristic than short-term overseas employment for purposes of career development. From the late nineteenth century, British chemists staffed the Empire, but also found employment in the expanding US economy. After 1945, chemists’ destinations shifted more markedly towards North America, including Canada, and later also to Europe. Our work thus provides a new perspective on the dynamics of scientists’ migration and contributes to studies on the brain drain.     

Terrestrial magnetism and the development of international collaboration in the early nineteenth century

The establishment of Gauss's and Weber's Magnetische Verein in 1834, and the British Government's support of Edward Sabine's ‘Magnetic Crusade’ in 1838, marked the opening of a new era in international geomagnetic research. However, the British and German efforts, although initiating an increase in the scale of investigations of the earth's field, were also the culmination of over half a century of activity by individuals and institutions in several countries. This article traces the growth of international cooperation in terrestrial magnetism from the late eighteenth century until the 1830s, and examines the change in leadership in the field from France to Britain and Germany. The transition from individual to government-backed collaboration is described, and also the role of Alexander von Humboldt as an organiser of geomagnetic research and author of a cosmical approach to earth magnetism as one of a number of related ‘telluric’ forces.     

Some observations of Leonardo,Galileo, Mariotte and others relative to size effect

A letter in which astronomer John Flamsteed expounded his unusual views about the causes of earthquakes survives in a number of drafts and copies. Though it was compiled in response to shocks felt in England in 1692 and Sicily in 1693, its relationship to the wide range of comparable theories current in the later seventeenth century must be considered. Flamsteed's suggestion that an ‘earthquake’ might be an explosion in the air was linked with contemporary thinking about the roles of sulphur and nitre in earthquakes underground, and in combustion, respiration, and other processes. It reveals his concern with subjects other than astronomy and the influence of his continuing contact with members of the Royal Society; it also offers an early example of how seventeenth-century work on sulphur and nitre prepared the way for ‘airquake’ and electrical theories associated with the London earthquake of 1750.     

Atomism and ‘subtlety’ in Francis Bacon's philosophy

Francis Bacon's reflections on atomism have generally been misunderstood because they have never been systematically studied in relation to the speculative chemical philosophy which he developed in the interval between about 1592 and his death in 1626. This philosophy, in many respects unknown to historians until quite recently, was the only body of positive science which Bacon ever accepted. The speculative philosophy was, on the whole, chemical and non-mechanical, and consequently not consistent with atomist doctrines. In fact, Bacon never at any time accepted the principal atomist tenets. It is therefore necessary to explain why he was interested in atomism at all. Of the several reasons for his interest one (hitherto unrecognised) is especially important—namely, his belief that the speculative and atomic philosophies had affinities. In particular, he believed that of all the ancient philosophies atomism alone approached the ideals associated with the key notion of ‘subtlety’—ideals represented in their highest form (as he imagined) in the speculative philosophy.