Histories of Scientific Observation

by Lorraine Daston, Elizabeth Lunbeck

Overview

Observation is the most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human. Its instruments include not only the naked senses but also tools such as the telescope and microscope, the questionnaire, the photographic plate, the notebook, the glassed-in beehive, and myriad other ingenious inventions designed to make the invisible visible, the evanescent permanent, the abstract concrete. Yet observation has almost never been considered as an object of historical inquiry in itself. This wide-ranging collection offers the first examination of the history of scientific observation in its own right, as both epistemic category and scientific practice.

Histories of Scientific Observation features engaging episodes drawn from across the spectrum of the natural and human sciences, ranging from meteorology, medicine, and natural history to economics, astronomy, and psychology. The contributions spotlight how observers have scrutinized everything—from seaweed to X-ray radiation, household budgets to the emotions—with ingenuity, curiosity, and perseverance verging on obsession. This book makes a compelling case for the significance of the long, surprising, and epistemologically significant history of scientific observation, a history full of innovations that have enlarged the possibilities of perception, judgment, and reason.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226136783
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	02/01/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Lunbeck is the Nelson Tyrone, Jr. Chair of American History and professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Observation Observed Loraine Daston Elizabeth Lunbeck 1

Part 1 Framing the History of Scientific Observation, 500-1800

Introduction 11

1 Observation in the Margins, 500-1500 Katharine Park 15

2 Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, 1500-1650 Gianna Pomata 45

3 The Empire of Observation, 1600 -1800 Lorraine Daston 81

Part 2 Observing and Believing: Evidence

Introduction 115

4 The Color of Blood: Between Sensory Experience and Epistemic Significance Domenico Bertoloni Meli 117

5 Seeing Is Believing: Professor Vagner's Wonderful World Michael D. Gordin 135

6 A Visual History of Jean Perrin's Brownian Motion Curves Charlotte Bigg 156

Part 3 Observing in New Ways: Techniques

Introduction 181

7 Frogs on the Mantelpiece: The Practice of Observation in Daily Life Mary Terrall 185

8 Sorting Things Out: The Economist as an Armchair Observer Harro Maas 206

9 "A Number of Scenes in a Badly Cut Film": Observation in the Age of Strobe Jimena Canales 230

10 Empathy as a Psychoanalytic Mode of Observation: Between Sentiment and Science Elizabeth Lunbeck 255

Part 4 Observing New Things: Objects

Introduction 277

11 Reforming Vision: The Engineer Le Play Learns to Observe Society Sagely Theodore M. Porter 281

12 Seeking Parts, Looking for Wholes Mary S. Morgan 303

13 Seeing the Blush: Feeling Emotions Otniel E. Dror 326

14 Visualizing Radiation: The Photographs of Henri Becquerel Kelley Wilder 349

Part 5 Observing Together: Communities

Introduction 369

15 The Geography of Observation: Distance and Visibility in Eighteenth-Century Botanical Travel Daniela Bleichmar 373

16 The World on a Page: Making a General Observation in the Eighteenth Century J. Andrew Mendelsohn 396

17 Coming to Attention: A Commonwealth of Observers during the Napoleonic Wars Anne Secord 421

List of Contributors 445

Index 449

Editorial Reviews

This is not only a rich and fascinating collection of the histories the title announces, but a persuasive, substantiated proposal for the recognition of a new field in the philosophy and sociology of science—observation. . . . An interesting, significant, thought-provoking work. Highly recommended.

Choice - M. Schiff

It’s surprising this hasn’t been done before: three impressive overview essays and a series of brilliant case studies. Together, they probe the way that the notion that systematic, disciplined observation is a foundation for knowledge was elaborated as part of the culture of modern science. It bears on any number of debates about who knows what, and how.

Times Higher Education - Jon Turney

A remarkable and ambitious volume which lays out observation as a distinctive approach to knowledge about the natural and human world. Weaving historical threads through the origins of the medical case study, to the natural historical study of the mating behavior of frogs, to the practices of twentieth-century biological and social sciences is no mean feat. This exciting collection is far more than the sum of its parts.”

Katharine Anderson

[Histories of Scientific Observation] beautifully deconstructs the would-be monolith that is ‘observation.’ The editors and contributing authors . . . demystify a potentially overwhelming topic and show how the history of observation is not too long, too big, or too multifaceted to be unobservable. . . . The scrupulously structured plan of the book, so important to the success of any edited volume of this type, will no doubt make Observation a key text in the history of science.

Endeavour - Katie Zimmerman

Deeply thoughtful—and readable. . . . [The] elegant and often suspenseful articles by a mix of distinguished scholars in the history of science and talented new arrivals to the field . . . illustrate the many challenges that have faced scientific observers from the 17th century to the 20th. . . . I highly recommend Histories of Scientific Observation, not only to historians of science, who have an obvious stake in its groundbreaking contents, but also to scientists curious about the role that practices such as observation and experiment play in their own research.

American Scientist - Alix Cooper

Observation deserves historical scrutiny like that devoted to such topics as experiment, evidence, measurement, and proof in recent years, and Histories of Scientific Observation offers an original and significant contribution to scholarship.”

Jan Golinski

It’s surprising this hasn’t been done before: three impressive overview essays and a series of brilliant case studies. Together, they probe the way that the notion that systematic, disciplined observation is a foundation for knowledge was elaborated as part of the culture of modern science. It bears on any number of debates about who knows what, and how.

— Jon Turney

Times Higher Education

[Histories of Scientific Observation] beautifully deconstructs the would-be monolith that is ‘observation.’ The editors and contributing authors . . . demystify a potentially overwhelming topic and show how the history of observation is not too long, too big, or too multifaceted to be unobservable. . . . The scrupulously structured plan of the book, so important to the success of any edited volume of this type, will no doubt make Observation a key text in the history of science.

— Katie Zimmerman

Endeavour

This is not only a rich and fascinating collection of the histories the title announces, but a persuasive, substantiated proposal for the recognition of a new field in the philosophy and sociology of science—observation. . . . An interesting, significant, thought-provoking work. Highly recommended.

— M. Schiff

Choice

Deeply thoughtful—and readable. . . . [The] elegant and often suspenseful articles by a mix of distinguished scholars in the history of science and talented new arrivals to the field . . . illustrate the many challenges that have faced scientific observers from the 17th century to the 20th. . . . I highly recommend Histories of Scientific Observation, not only to historians of science, who have an obvious stake in its groundbreaking contents, but also to scientists curious about the role that practices such as observation and experiment play in their own research.

— Alix Cooper

American Scientist