Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T16:47:04.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The History of Science of Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Trevor H. Levere
Affiliation:
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Victoria College, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1K7, Canada

Extract

Canada as a Neo-Europe is a relatively recent construct, although the people of its first nations, the Indians and Inuit, have been here for some twelve thousand years, since the beginning of the retreat of the last ice sheets. Western science came in a limited way with the first European explorers; Samuel de Champlain left a mariner's astrolabe behind him. The Jesuits followed with their organization and educational institutions, and from the eighteenth century science was established within European Canadian culture.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The term is taken from Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 23.Google Scholar

2 Jarrell, R.A., ‘British Scientific Institutions and Canada: The Rhetoric and the Reality’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (1982), series IV, 20, pp. 532547.Google Scholar

3 Berger, Carl, The Sense of Power. Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism 1867–1914, Toronto, 1970.Google Scholar

4 E.g. McKillop, A.B., A Disciplined Intelligence. Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era, Montreal, 1979.Google Scholar

5 A more positive view is expressed in Berger, Carl, The Writing of Canadian History. Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900 to 1970, Toronto, 1976.Google Scholar

6 Notable among the publications of the Montreal group is Pyenson, Lewis, Cultural Imperialism and Exact Science: German Expansion Overseas, 1900–1930, New York, 1985Google Scholar, the first volume of a trilogy in progress.

7 Zeller, Suzanne, Inventing Canada. Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation, Toronto, 1987.Google Scholar

8 An excellent account is Zaslow, M., Reading the Rocks. The Story of the Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, 1975.Google Scholar

9 E.g. Tory, H.M., (ed.) A History of Science in Canada, Toronto, 1939Google Scholar; Stanley, G.F.G., (ed.) Pioneers of Canadian Science, Toronto, 1966.Google Scholar

10 Gridgeman, N.T., Biological Sciences at the National Research Council of Canada: The Early Years to 1952, Waterloo, 1979Google Scholar; Middleton, W.E.K., Physics at the National Research Council of Canada, 1929–1952, Waterloo, 1979.Google Scholar

11 Levere, T.H. and Jarrell, R.A., A Curious Field-Book. Science and Society in Canadian History, Toronto, 1974Google Scholar; Sinclair, B., Ball, N.R., and Petersen, J.O., Let us be Honest and Modest. Technology and Society in Canadian History, Toronto, 1974.Google Scholar

12 The most recent research aids are Enros, P., A Bibliography of Publishing Scientists in Ontario between 1914 and 1939, Thornhill, 1985Google Scholar, and Richardson, R.A. and MacDonald, B.H., Science and Technology in Canadian History: A Bibliography of Primary Sources to 1914, Thornhill, 1987.Google Scholar

13 Chartrand, L., Duchesne, R., Gingras, Y., Histoire des Sciences au Québec, Montreal, 1970.Google Scholar

14 Ministry of Education, Ontario, Curriculum Guideline. Science Intermediate and Senior Divisions 1988. Part 15. Science in Society. OAC, 1988.Google Scholar

15 McBryde, W.A.E., Chieh, P.C., and Dixon, E.A., (eds), Essays in Chemical History, Chemical Education Division, Canadian Society for Chemistry, Ottawa, 1988.Google Scholar

16 Warrington, C.J.S. and Nicholls, R.V.V., A History of Chemistry in Canada, New York, 1939.Google Scholar

17 A notable example is Bliss, Michael, The Discovery of Insulin, Chicago, 1982.Google ScholarPubMed

18 Neilson, J.B. and Paterson, G.R., Associated Medical Services, Incorporated: A History, Toronto, 1987.Google Scholar

19 World Directory of Historians of Mathematics (ed. May, K.O. and Gardner, C.R.M.), Toronto, 1972Google Scholar; 2nd edn Toronto 1978.

20 May, K.O., Bibliography and Research Manual in the History of Mathematics, Toronto, 1973.Google Scholar

21 The Canadian Committee on the History of the Geological Sciences issues a newsletter, from the Department of Geology, University of Saskatchewan.