Abstracts of the History of Science Society 2004 Austin Meeting 18 ...

M. D. Eddy, Dibner Institute, MIT (mdeddy@mit.edu)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom VII
Principles and Practice: Agricultural Chemistry in Scotland, 1770-1800
The pre-eminent scientific institution of Enlightenment Scotland was the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE). Its reputation was well
established in continental Europe and its resident members were drawn from the university and from a highly talented group of literati
who lived within traveling distance of the city. In the past, studies of RSE fellows have focused upon members whose research proved
to be of use to the emerging chemical, anatomical, and geological sciences of Victorian Britain. Though such a historiography has
increased our knowledge of figures like Joseph Black, William Cullen, James Hutton, and John Playfair, the process by which these
philosophers and their contemporaries actually applied the experiments performed in Edinburgh?s laboratories to the improvement of
Scotland’s economy has been relatively ignored. To remedy this situation, this paper addresses the career of James Anderson (1739-
1808), one of Edinburgh’s chemically trained literati. Anderson was a founding member of the RSE and he nurtured a life-long interest
in agricultural improvement. My essay will first address the theoretical principles that guided Anderson’s inquiry into agricultural
chemistry. Like so many of Edinburgh’s bright adolescents, Anderson attended the University of Edinburgh, especially the chemistry
lectures of William Cullen. Particular attention will be given to Anderson’s understanding of principle-based chemistry and its application
to mineralogical classification. After his studies at Edinburgh, Anderson went on to apply his knowledge of chemistry to his own
farm in Monkshill, Aberdeenshire and in several ‘fact finding’ tours of Scotland which were funded by the government. To explore
how Anderson practically applied the chemistry he learned from Cullen, the second section looks at Anderson’s A Practical Treatise on
Peat Moss (1794), An Essay on Quick-Lime, as a Cement and as a Manure (1799) and the highly popular An Account of the Present State of the
Hebrides and Western Coasts of Scotland (1785). However, Anderson was not content with simply writing about chemical utility and the last
section of this paper explores how he used this knowledge as a rhetorical backdrop for several treatises that he wrote on Scotland’s economy.
To excavate his thoughts on these topics, I will look at Observations on the Effects of the Coal Duty (1792) and General View of the
Agriculture? in Aberdeen (1794). I will conclude with a few remarks on how the theoretical and practical aspects of Anderson?s career
point to a more nuanced view of the utilitarian interests of the RSE.
Fa-ti Fan, State University of New York at Binghamton (ffan@binghamton.edu )
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country A
Natural History in Chinese-Western Encounter
This paper compares two parallel and interrelated movements of scientific knowledge in China during the second half of the nineteenth
century. On the one hand, it examines how Western naturalists and their Chinese associates carried out research into traditional Chinese
lore about nature. They collaborated in interviewing Chinese people, translating Chinese literature, and other activities for the purpose
of collecting scientific data. On the other hand, the paper looks at the efforts of Chinese and Western intellectuals to introduce Western
natural history into China by translating Western scientific texts and establishing natural history museums. The paper focuses on two
groups of historical actors: first, an intellectual network in Shanghai that comprised of Western missionaries and science advisors as well
as Chinese officials and intellectuals; second, Chinese visitors to Europe who were interested in science, particularly natural history. By
tracing the formation and transmission of scientific knowledge in cultural encounter, the paper provides a new perspective in understanding
the history of natural history in global context.
Philipp Felsch, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (felsch@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom V
Laboratory Landscapes. Angelo Mosso and the Mountains of Fatigue, 1875 - 1900
Angelo Mosso, the Italian pioneer of physiological fatigue research and subsequent founder of a European science of work, presumably
has never been inside of a factory. A skilled mountaineer, he conducted most of his research in the Alps – as did many French and
German colleagues who were equally involved in the emergence of physiological thermodynamics (e.g. Adolf Fick, Auguste Chauveau,
Hugo Kronecker, Nathan Zuntz). During the last decades of the 19th century, the Alpine “laboratory landscape” connected climbing
professors with physiological recording instruments, sublime aesthetics, and bourgeois morals of arduousness, generating an experimental
culture that shaped the epistemic design of future energetic physiology – such as the extension of “fatigue” from the muscles to sensory
and psychic phenomena, and the high concern for individual physiognomies of exhaustion. Drawing largely upon Mosso’s unpublished
notebooks and correspondence, my paper aims to show how the sublime and trembling moment on the summit – since romanticism
a sought-after source for conventional ecstasy – was translated into graphic tracings of fatigue.
Della D. Fenster, University of Richmond (dfenster@richmond.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country D
Leonard Dickson: You Can Take the Man Out of Texas But not the Texas Out of the Man