“Helmholtz as a Leader of Atmospheric Science: From Krakatoa to Count Zeppelin”

David Cahan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

This paper highlights the intellectual and organizational leadership that Hermann von Helmholtz provided to atmospheric science from the volcanic eruption of the island of Kraktoa (1883) to Count Zeppelin’s attempt to get support for his “rigid airship” (1894). After Krakatoa, Helmholtz responded with a triad of papers (1888-90) on the dynamics of the atmosphere. He effectively transferred an old hydrodynamic concept of his from the Earth’s waters to its atmosphere. This reflected, it is argued, his uncanny ability at creatively mixing disciplines, in this case using thermodynamics and hydrodynamics to better understand surfaces in the atmosphere and on the oceans. The paper also indicates Helmholtz’s organizational leadership in meteorology (atmospheric physics). First, at the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Second, through his good contacts with two of meteorology’s important figures (Georg von Neumayer and Johann Kiessling). Third, as an expert advisor in atmospheric science to others (Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Amsterdam, and the German Reich) in granting awards for work devoted to the study of atmospheric science and, in the case of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, for financial backing for his “rigid airship.”

“Vilhelm Bjerknes, Complexity, and the Gordian Knots of Meteorology”

James Fleming (Colby College)

Abstract coming.

“Prince Albert I of Monaco and the Conduct of Meteorology at Sea”

Penelope Hardy (Xavier University)

Beginning in the 1880s, Prince Albert I of Monaco used a series of custombuilt, ocean-going yachts to do science at sea. Equipped with well-appointed laboratories, the yachts accommodated scientists from across Europe, who were invited by the prince to participate in scientific cruises in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Arctic. The biological and oceanographic work Albert coordinated was recognized widely, including with a 1913 Nobel Prize to the scientist who discovered anaphylaxis onboard and the 1918 Alexander Agassiz Medal from the US National Academy of Sciences for Albert. Yet Albert and his yachts were also key to the establishment of meteorological techniques for exploring the atmosphere above the oceans. This paper examines Albert's efforts to adopt and refine the technologies of shore-based meteorology for shipboard use in the first decade of the twentieth century. With the help of German meteorologist Hugo Hergesell, he developed shipboard meteorological procedures, continually improving his technology to enable their safe and effective conduct from the deck of a ship at sea. He publicized his efforts and his innovations broadly. He called on both scientists and crowned heads of Europe to participate in scheduled international observations and to establish programs in their own countries. This paper thus places Albert's shipboard meteorology alongside other international scientific efforts at the beginning of the twentieth century, and explicates it as part of his larger program to promote international scientific efforts that understood the ocean-atmosphere as a global system.

“Hedging Your Epistemology and Hiding Your Metaphysics: Conceptions of Prediction and Control in Early Earth System Science”

Jenifer Barton (University of Toronto)

In a NASA-formed committee led by the mathematical modeller Francis Bretherton, a group of Earth and environmental scientists worked from 1983 to 1988 to detail an interdisciplinary research program to study the Earth as an integrated system comprised of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere. This program, called Earth System Science, drew on systems thinking and cybernetics to pose and elaborate a new concept: “the Earth system.” Some scholars have interpreted systems thinking as being implicated in an ethos that emphasizes management and control. In this interpretation, certain and final knowledge of a system was believed possible. This knowledge would then facilitate total control and management of the system, as well as the complete prediction of future states of the system. In this paper, I argue that this was not the aim of Earth System Science as it was conceived by those working around Bretherton in the 1980s. Systems need not be understood as being in-principle fully knowable, and uncertainties need not imply epistemic gaps that could, in principle, be filled. Using the case study of the early development of Earth System Science, this paper will draw on Andrew Pickering’s more recent cybernetic work and Chunglin Kwa’s distinction between Romantic and Baroque conceptions of complexity to argue for another interpretation of systems, one that incorporates uncertainty and potential unknowability. The Bretherton Committee’s conception of the Earth as a system that could never be known with complete certainty entailed that, for at least all practical purposes, total control and prediction of the Earth system could never be achieved.