The aim of this paper is to investigate the notion of need, in this case an entire city's global need for water. This was a notion invented by Paris technicians between 1760 and 1804 in the context of several water supply projects, notably two river diversion schemes, those of the Yvette and the Ourcq, where the concept was much discussed. Different ways of considering the question of need – such as water resources, consumption and use, whether present or future – were strongly related to engineers' or scientists' conceptions of their own work. State engineers claimed they could make objective estimates of future needs with no reference to either value judgements or political intentions, a position which made it possible to keep strong control over the decision in the name of the state. In contrast, a practically trained engineer working outside the state corps claimed that in the case of expertise about the future, estimates would depend strongly on political intentions, norms and ideals, so the government should first give an outline of its intended actions. The paper studies the differences between these two approaches to the concept of need, especially how they articulated knowledge about what is and knowledge about what ought to be, present and future. The paper ends by linking these differences to conceptions of what was supposed to be technical or political in such projects and of what role engineers intended to play in the decision-making process.

This paper documents an important development in Robert Boyle's natural-philosophical method – his use from the 1660s onwards of ‘heads’ and ‘inquiries’ as a means of organizing his data, setting himself an agenda when studying a subject and soliciting information from others. Boyle acknowledged that he derived this approach from Francis Bacon, but he had not previously used it in his work, and the reason why it came to the fore when it did is not apparent from his printed and manuscript corpus. It is necessary to look beyond Boyle to his milieu for the cause, in this case to the influence on him of the Royal Society. Whereas the Royal Society in its early years is often seen as putting into practice a programme pioneered by Boyle, this crucial methodological change on his part seems rather to have been stimulated by the society's early concern for systematic data-collecting. In this connection, it is here shown that a key text, Boyle's influential ‘General Heads for a Natural History of a Country, Great or small’, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1666, represents more of a shared initiative between him and the society than has hitherto been appreciated.

In the last three decades many historians of science have sought to account for the emergence of modern science and technology in sites that did not participate in the shaping of apparently original ideas. They have extensively used a model of the transfer of scientific ideas and practices from centres of scientific activity to a passively receptive periphery. This paper contributes to the discussion of an alternative historiographic approach, one that employs the notion of appropriation to direct attention towards the receptive modes and devices of a local culture. A historiography built around the notion of appropriation deals less with the question of the faithful transfer of scientific ideas than with the particular features of the discourse produced by local scholars as the best way to overcome or conform to the constraints of the receptive culture. The case examined to describe this culturally and intellectually intricate process is the profound transformation undergone by the Newtonian concept of vis inertiae in the work of Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806), one of the most important Greek scholars of the eighteenth century.

This paper presents the story of two calculating machines invented by Sir Samuel Morland (1625–95) in the 1660s. These instruments are the earliest known mechanical calculators made in England. Their designs are unusual and very much of their time. They appealed to some, especially at court, and were dismissed by others, such as Robert Hooke. The first part of the paper introduces Morland and the courtier–inventor's world, in which a reputation as a ‘machinist’ or an engineer could accompany high social status. It considers why a former diplomat and postal spy would turn to invention in general and to mechanical calculators in particular as a career move in the Restoration court. The second part addresses the instruments – attention to their design reveals Morland's inspiration. The paper concludes with an examination of the market for the calculators in London, Paris and Florence. While it is notable that the calculators circulated both in court and in the commercial sphere, even more interesting is the contrast between their receptions in these two spheres. The story of these machines and their maker helps flesh out the poorly understood world of the courtier–inventor in early modern England.

In 1823 the astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel gave notice of an observational error which is now known as the personal equation. Bessel, however, never used this phrase to characterize the finding that when noting the time of a certain event observers show a considerable ‘involuntary constant difference’. From this starting point the paper develops two arguments. First, these involuntary differences subverted the concept of the ‘observing observer’. What had previously been defined as a reference point of trust and precision turned into a source of an error that resisted any wilful intervention. Second, and contrary to later suggestions, Bessel's findings did not initially lead to discussions and measures of permanent control. In everyday astronomical work the influence of such differences could be avoided by comparatively simple means. Taking this into account offers a new perspective both on the history of the personal equation and on the significance of Bessel's findings. Whereas the former has to be read as the history of a rather particular reaction to the phenomenon of constant differences, the latter is connected with a rather fundamental transition in the epistemology of the observer.

The 1830s and 1840s witnessed a European movement to accumulate data about the terrestrial environment, enterprises including the German and British geomagnetic crusades. This movement was not limited to geomagnetic studies but notably included an important meteorological component. By focusing on observation practices in sedentary and expeditionary contexts, this paper shows how the developing fields of geomagnetism and meteorology were then intimately interlinked. It analyses the circulation and cross-connections of the practices and discourses shared by these two research fields. Departing from a Humboldtian historiography, the paper especially stresses the role of Adolphe Quetelet, director of the Brussels Observatory, whose importance in the development of the earth sciences has until now been largely neglected. It reassesses the involvement of the French scientific community in the British and German geomagnetic crusades, moving beyond the well-known account of Arago's opposition to these undertakings. It is hoped thereby to contribute to a better historical understanding of the renewal of the earth sciences in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

This paper takes up the concept of ‘crisis’ at both historical and historiographical levels. It proceeds through two examples of periods that have been described by historians of physics using a language of crisis. The first examines an incipient German theoretical-physics community around 1900 and the debates that concerned the so-called ‘failure’ of the mechanical world view. It is argued, largely on the basis of what is now an extensive body of secondary literature, that there is little evidence for a widespread crisis in this period. Abandoning the term as both description and explanation, one comes to the far more intriguing suggestion that the conflict over foundations was not evidence of a divisive dissonance but rather of collective construction. What has been termed crisis was, in fact, the practice of theoretical physics in the fin de siècle. The second example is the period either side of the advent of quantum mechanics around 1925. Different subgroups within the theoretical-physics community viewed the state of the field in dramatically different ways. Those, such as members of the Sommerfeld school in Munich, who saw the task of the physicist as lying in the solution of particular problems, neither saw a crisis nor acknowledged its resolution. On the other hand those, such as several researchers associated with Niels Bohr's institute in Copenhagen, who focused on the creation and adaptation of new principles, openly advocated a crisis even before decisive anomalies arose. They then sought to conceptualize the development of quantum mechanics in terms of crises and the revolutions that followed. Thomas Kuhn's language of crisis, revolution and anomaly, it is concluded, arises from his focus on only one set of theoretical physicists. A closer look at intra-communal differences opens a new vista onto what he termed ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ science.

A significant but neglected theme in the history of British science in the nineteenth century is the funding of institutional research. The subscription to the ‘great battery’ at the Royal Institution in 1808 and 1809 provides the first instance of named individuals prepared to commit themselves to the provision of apparatus to be used for research in the new field of electrochemistry. This paper analyses the subscribers who were deemed to be ‘enlightened’ and whom Humphry Davy subsequently described as ‘a few zealous cultivators and patrons of science’. Using information from the subscription list, a distinction is made between the individual subscriptions pledged and the sums actually paid. In contextualizing the subscription, insights are provided into the Royal Society, the contemporary scientific community and the politics of metropolitan science. The voltaic subscription represents an early example of the repercussions of the nature of research funding for institutional finances and governance.

John Fleming (1785–1857), later professor in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, made his combative contribution to natural history between 1812 and 1832. As an Edinburgh student he had followed Robert Jameson's ‘Wernerian’ lead. His earliest publications, from 1813, expressed what was to be a lifelong hostility to the work of James Hutton. Yet his own thinking moved increasingly towards a ‘uniformitarian’ as opposed to a ‘catastrophist’ view of earth history. His Philosophy of Zoology (1822) embodied criticism of Cuvier. More dramatically, he became embroiled in controversy with Buckland and later with Conybeare. By then the ‘uniformitarian’ hypothesis had been adopted by Lyell, with whom Fleming was in close touch from the mid-1820s. Fleming may have had some grounds for feeling that his priority in advocating uniformitarianism was later overlooked. His History of British Animals (1828) included a preface in which he elaborated his earlier hypothesis as to ‘revolutions … in the animal kingdom’ correlated with six geological epochs. Tension had then developed in Fleming's relationship with Jameson, and the early 1830s found him in a mood of increasing frustration. Reconciliation with Buckland and approval by Sedgwick still left ‘the Zoological Ishmael’ feeling that his advancement in the scientific world was blocked, perhaps permanently. In historical perspective Fleming may be seen as a minor but not insubstantial figure in the scientific landscape of the early nineteenth century.

Theoretical astrophysics emerged as a significant research programme with the construction of a series of stellar models by A. S. Eddington. This paper examines the controversies surrounding those models as a way of understanding the development and justification of new theoretical technologies. In particular, it examines the challenges raised against Eddington by James Jeans, and explores how the two astronomers championed different visions of what it meant to do science. Jeans argued for a scientific method based on certainty and completeness, whereas Eddington called for a method that valued exploration and further investigation, even at the sake of secure foundations. The first generation of stellar models depended on the validity of Eddington's approach – the physics and many of the basic facts of stars were poorly understood and he justified his models through their utility for future research and their robustness under challenging use. What would become theoretical astrophysics depended heavily on this phenomenological outlook, which Jeans dismissed as not even science. This was a dispute about the practice of theory, and it would be this methodological debate (rather than the emergence of new facts or the incorporation of new theory) that made theoretical astrophysics viable.

This paper examines the debate engendered in ethnological and anthropological circles by Darwin's Origin of Species and its effects. The debate was more about the nature of human diversity than about transmutation. By 1859 many polygenists thought monogenism had been clearly shown to be an antiquated and essentially religious concept. Yet the doctrine of natural selection gave rise to a ‘new monogenism’. Proponents of polygenism such as James Hunt claimed natural selection had finally excluded monogenism, but Thomas Huxley, the most prominent exponent of the new monogenism, claimed it amalgamated the ‘best’ of both polygenism and monogenism. What it did provide was an explanation for the irreversible inequality of races, while it maintained that all humans were of one species. This bolstered belief in the innate superiority of the Caucasians over other peoples. The effect was finally to sever British ethnology from its evangelical monogenist roots. More subtly and surprisingly, it provided support in Church circles for a move away from the ideal of the ‘Native Church’.

This article revisits the question of the social valence of William James's account of the self. As biographers have long noted, James worried much about the crisis of the autonomous, unitary and well-bounded self. This article suggests that, despite his anxieties, James perceived that those features of the self opened up new possibilities both for the individual and for society. By locating the Jamesian self in the context of period techniques for the cultivation of the self, religious and occult practices, and mystical-cum-political discourse, I argue that for James the crisis of the modern self represented a means both of rooting individuals firmly in the community and of endowing them with a form of agency stronger than those promised by traditional doctrines of the simple, self-directed and well-bounded self. Thus, I argue, James's conception of the self and the techniques of the self that he advocated were part and parcel of an attempt to rethink the relationship between individual and community and to promote a new type of society, one composed of spontaneous pluralistic, open and intimate communities.

While important research on the history of scientific commemorations has been published in recent years, relatively little attention has been paid to the commemoration of invention and inventors. A comparison of the centenaries of James Watt's death in 1919 and of Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction in 1931 reveals how the image of the inventor was being refashioned in the early twentieth century. Although shortly after his death Watt had been acclaimed by the Royal Society as a great ‘natural philosopher’, a century later his reputation had been appropriated by the engineering professions and trades. As the title of Dickinson's 1935 biography described him, he was seen primarily as a ‘craftsman and engineer’, not a scientist. With poor publicity, which failed in particular to make any connection between steam power and electricity, the 1919 centenary excited little interest outside engineering circles. Meanwhile, professional scientists, who were seeking financial recognition for the importance of their research in ‘pure’ science, had found a new icon in Michael Faraday. They seized the occasion of the 1931 centenary to reinforce the link between Faraday's scientific research and the wonders of modern electrical technology and thereby to elevate the role of ‘blue-sky’ research over its ‘mere’ application.

The establishment of research and development (R & D) laboratories by the UK affiliates of overseas-controlled firms was a feature of the R & D landscape throughout the twentieth century and had its origins even earlier. From their foundation they served as sites for international scientific and technological collaboration and exchange. Here I draw on both quantitative and qualitative evidence to examine the research and development activities of overseas multinational enterprises in the UK. This activity has a longer history than most previous commentators have suggested. The integration of at least some R & D facilities into international research networks was already a feature during the inter-war years. This became far more common after the early 1960s, as firms worked hard to integrate previously independent laboratories into coordinated research organizations. Far from being a ‘new collaborative mode’ in the late twentieth century, cross-border networks of industrial laboratories have long contributed to the internationalization of science.

This paper explores the transition to synthetic dyestuffs through a principal focus on developments within the last major holdout of the natural-dye industry, the blue colourant indigo. It starts by looking closely at existing practices of cultivation and manufacture of the natural dye in colonial India in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also develops a case study based on targeted efforts scientifically to improve plant-derived indigo in laboratories and experiment stations in colonial India and imperial England. Experts attempted to increase yields and enhance the purity of the natural dye to meet the competition of the cheaper and purer synthetic indigo launched on the international market in 1897 by two German firms, BASF and Hoechst. The paper explains the patronage of science by European planters, the colonial state and the metropolitan government and analyses the nature of science that emerged in the colonial–imperial nexus.

In the first half of the twentieth century, hormones took pride of place as life's master molecules and the endocrinologist took precedence over the geneticist as the scientist offering the means to control life. But, as with molecular genetics and biotechnology today, the status of endocrinology was not based solely on contemporary scientific and medical practices. To a high degree it was also reliant on expectations or visions of what endocrinologists would soon be able to do. Inspired by the approach of social studies of techno-scientific expectations, the aim of this article is to explore some of the great expectations connected to the development of endocrinology in the 1930s. The analysis is based on popular books written by the American physician and endocrinologist Louis Berman. The paper argues that Berman thought not only that it was perfectly possible to understand human nature through hormone analysis but that endocrinologists would be able to control, design and ‘improve’ humans by using hormone replacement therapy. Furthermore, in contrast to most of the eugenics of his time, Berman suggested that the whole population of the world should be improved. As a political activist he wanted to contribute to the development of new human beings, ‘ideal normal persons’, thereby reaching an ‘ideal society’. That HRT could involve risks was something that he seems not to have taken into account.

Focusing on Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies as a case, this article uses economies of research tool exchange to develop a new way of characterizing cross-disciplinary research. Throughout its life from 1960 to 1972, the Center for Cognitive Studies hosted scholars from several disciplines. However, there were two different research cultures at the Center. With its directors and patrons committed to a philosophy that equated creative science with eclectic search for and invention of new tools, the Center's initial interdisciplinary research culture emphasized the exchange of ideas and methods. Several years later, once its work was well under way, the Center's culture became multidisciplinary. Rather than emphasizing the sharing, invention, location, discussion and stabilization of new research techniques, the Center's multidisciplinary economy involved researchers working in parallel.

The focus of Newtonian scholarship has shifted over the last couple of decades. Compare any relevant collection of studies from the third quarter of the twentieth century with a recent one such as Newton and Newtonianism: New Studies (2004), edited by James Force and Sarah Hutton, and the changes leap to the eye. Newtonian studies have been traditionally concerned with Newton's writings and achievements in the fields of mechanics, optics and mathematics, and with his influence on the subsequent development of these disciplines – a line of enquiry that was nourished by the systematic study of unpublished materials in the post-war period and has reached a high degree of technical sophistication. In this perspective, the priority attributed to Newton's natural philosophy and mathematics reflects the assumption that Newtonian ‘science’ should be granted an unquestioned pre-eminence over the rest of his much varied production, as the latter contributed ‘little or nothing to our twentieth-century world’. The landmarks of post-war Newtonian scholarship thus aimed at the identification, analysis and interpretation of Newton's ‘scientific’ manuscripts, carefully separated from the rest of his densely written and sometimes enigmatic paperwork. Establishing such a demarcation certainly made sense within a historiographical practice directed primarily at the reconstruction of Newton's contribution to the making of modern science, and was sustained by the perception of an essential continuity between Newton's alleged main concerns and the practices of twentieth-century physics and mathematics.

The Cambridge school of animal morphology dominated British zoology in the late nineteenth century. Historians have argued that they were very successful until the death of their leader F. M. Balfour in 1882, when the school all but died with him. This paper argues that their initial success came about because their work fitted well with the university in the 1870s and 1880s. They attempted to trace evolutionary trees by studying individual development. To do this they needed access to species they considered primitive. Balfour made use of his social networks to aid the school and to collect the specimens they needed for their work. The school has been portrayed as failing in the 1890s when students rejected dry laboratory-bound studies. However, a new generation of researchers who followed Balfour had to travel extensively if they were to obtain the organisms they needed. International travel was popular amongst zoologists and the Cambridge school developed their own extensive networks. A new breed of adventurer–zoologists arose, but because of the school's tenuous position within the university they were unable to equal Balfour's success.

This paper explores the relationship between operations research (OR) as practised during the Second World War and the claims of many of its proponents that it constituted an application of scientific method. It begins with an examination of the pre-war work of two of the most notable leaders in wartime OR, the British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett and the American theoretical physicist Philip Morse. Despite differences in their scientific work, each saw science as an essentially creative act relying on the skill and judgement of the individual scientist in the deployment of rational methods for the development of legitimate conclusions. When scientists began to study military operations, their investigations were defined by the technically sophisticated heuristic practices already surrounding military planning. They did not seek to replace these practices with their own rational methods. Rather, they became scholars of the military's methods and adapted their pre-war experience by shifting their self-disciplined attitude to their own work to bodies of military knowledge. Thus scientists learned so well to navigate an alien heuristic system that investigations they conducted within it took on the characteristics that they judged defined scientific work.