“British Navigation as Science and Practice, 1673-1761”

Jason Grier (York University)

As the reach of European mariners lengthened between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the tools of navigation became increasingly sophisticated. From the perspective of instruments, mathematics and astronomy, navigation appears to have become increasingly ‘scientific’ during this period and its history can be told as a narrative of a transformation from simple instruments and localized knowledge to complex tools, mathematization and universal knowledge—a story which culminates with John Harrison’s chronometer and the ‘solving’ of the longitude problem. Yet, from the perspective of navigational practice, by and large little actually changed during these centuries. While it is true that ever more sophisticated instruments were developed, day-to-day navigation continued to rely primarily on dead-reckoning even after the perfection of Harrison’s chronometer. In this paper I will focus on the example of Edmond Halley’s Paramore voyages, especially his famous dispute with his lieutenant Edward Harrison, as well as evidence of the daily practice of navigation that can be found in logbooks in order to consider contrasting views of eighteenth-century navigation as science and practice.

“Seeing like a Circumnavigator: Early Nineteenth Century French Ships of Discovery as Centers of Calculation”

Ralph Kingston (Auburn University)

Discussing “centers of calculation,” Bruno Latour describes French explorer Lapérouse’s landing at Sakhalin. Lapérouse, Latour tells us, was interested in accumulating data to bring to France, not in analyzing his encounters. Mapmakers in depots and zoologists and botanists in natural history museums would process the information instead. Lapérouse saw Sakhalin. Back in Europe, scholars and scientists traveled across continents, climates, and periods by walking through a gallery and opening some drawers.

This paper challenges this monopoly given to metropolitan calculation, the strict distinction between science in Paris and in the field. A ship was more than an instrument that “scribbles the shape of [countries].” Expeditions certainly collected. They noted, sketched, accumulated specimens. Shipboard scientists, however, did not forgo the opportunity to produce analyses. Early nineteenth century explorers ignored their instructions. Big decisions in terms of what should be pursued were made at sea. And, although metropolitan naturalists like Georges Cuvier were keen to disparage their efforts to be more than collectors, travelling naturalists dissected and described; they compared, combined, classified, and catalogued.

Circumnavigators, in particular, carried observations from landing to landing. Crossing continents and climates, navigating place and space, they developed scientific theories and sought out proofs. Moving through the ocean, the ship was a center of calculation, studying places and people at a distance. Explorers forged a body of knowledge distinct from that produced by metropolitan scientists using their collections after their return.

“Knowing the Ocean: the HMS Challenger Expedition and the Origins of the Ocean as a Scientific Space”

Emma Zuroski (University of Auckland)

In 1872 HMS Challenger set sail on a four-year circumnavigation of the globe with the goal of conducting the most complete and systematic exploration of the deep sea ever pursued. Touted as an emblematic success of Victorian science and continually identified as the beginning of modern oceanography, the Challenger expedition is a fundamental historical moment in the conception of the ocean as a scientific space. But what does it mean to know the ocean? While many historians have discussed the significance of the expedition for early oceanography, far fewer have examined the ways in which the form and function of the expedition established the dominant ways of knowing the ocean that have persisted into the twenty-first century. The history of the expedition demonstrates how the burgeoning political trend towards cosmopolitanism in the nineteenth century lingers in our conception of the ocean as simultaneously a global space, a scientific object and a vast set of territories. In this talk I will examine the ways in which early scientific knowledge of the ocean was co-constructed with the methods of studying it. By historicizing the expedition, and locating early scientific studies of the ocean within trends of nineteenth century natural history, we can begin to understand the origins of the multitude of ways of knowing the ocean.

Scientific Fisheries”: Social Organization and Working Culture at the Naples Zoological Station 1880-1913”

Katharina Steiner (University of Zurich)

As the world’s first marine biological research center, in the late nineteenth century the Naples Zoological Station gained model status. This institution has always been considered a center for laboratory-based research, in particular experimental embryology. In recent historiographical discussion of the Station, we continue to read that field research was not carried out there. In my article, I argue that both field and laboratory research were practiced and that these practices were mutually interacting. On the basis of an investigation into the conceptual and practical execution of the “scientific fishery” research program, I show that the Station’s directors successively developed institutional structures for field-research. Field and laboratory were closely interlinked through a range of working steps taking in the sea, the Station’s laboratories, and working areas outside the scientific institution. The scientific fishery was the locus for a process transforming materia prima, freshly dredged material, into an object of research: e.g. a process moving past the micro-slide culminating in a published zoological illustration. My article offers an alternative historical view of the Naples Zoological Station by focusing on its permanent employees. The interweaving of field and laboratory in the concept of the “scientific fishery” was mirrored in the Station’s personnel-structure. The fishery carried out its activities through close cooperation of actors from various national origins, social milieus, and levels of professional experience. The differences manifest here were sharp, involving educational level, areas of expertise, and income. But these differences supported the Station’s emergence as a model European scientific research institution.