The trouble with ‘science’

Cross-posted from The H Word.

Test tubes? Check. Pipette? Check. Safety glasses? Check. White coat? Check. Random coloured liquid? Check. Photograph: Alamy

I find that I am nearly always on my guard when I come across the words “science” and “scientist” in a sentence. OK, maybe not nearly always; after all, I call myself a historian of science, I write this post in the science section of the Guardian’s website and am forever using the words myself. Nevertheless …

“Scientists say …” is a phrase that hides far more than it explains. Which scientists, working in what field, where and why? Geologists are unlikely to be saying much, for example, about cancer, although if they are we should probably assess their comments differently from those emanating from a medical research lab. One group of chemists/astronomers/climate scientists may say something very different to another. Scientists can be academics, working in industry or for government departments, military or civilian. They can be pursuing original research or making use of routine techniques.

“Scientists say” is little more use, in fact, than “they say”. It just sounds more authoritative. Strangely, though, while use of the term is usually unhelpfully vague, the iconography of science and scientists is very often too specific. Thus test tubes and white coats have become the overriding symbol for people and activities that may have nothing whatsoever to do with these objects.

The words also start my historical sensibilities twitching, on the alert for anachronism. “Scientist” is a particular problem, being a word of fairly recent invention. While it was coined in the 1830s, by William Whewell, it was barely used at all until the end of the century, as this Google Ngram indicates.

Using “scientist” when discussing a period when the word was not used can be seriously misleading. We risk loading an individual’s views, status, ambitions and work with associations and ideas that would have meant nothing to them. The word allows us to forget to enquire whether they did something else to make their living, or were personally wealthy, and that science was not a career or vocation. Not only did the word not exist but there was no equivalent and no such idea.

Of course “science” is equally problematic. The root, “scientia” is simply knowledge or understanding, and what we now think of as science was, until the 19th century, natural philosophy and a range of more specific and practical fields: astronomy, mathematics, chymistry, physick and so on. Its meaning is historically unstable, and what counts as scientific in one period is not the same as what counts in another.

All this naturally makes it somewhat dubious that we should call a discipline that includes research on the pre-modern period history of science. It is shorthand, of course, but not for “the study of everything that looks like science to us today” or “the study of everything that we can trace as having led to today’s science”, but something more like “the study of humanity’s ideas about and interaction with the natural world”. Our definition carefully avoids connotations of the professional contexts that are surely ubiquitous in the word’s meaning today.

This leads me to another common misuse of “science”, which is as a synonym simply for “nature”. An example, as my fellow H-Worder, Vanessa, pointed out on Twitter the other day, is the Facebook page I fucking love science, which often seems to confuse the two. Our knowledge about nature is certainly mediated by science, but the two are not the same thing – nature gets on just fine without anyone watching, and our ideas about it have changed over the course of history, and will change in the future.

If it’s not “Yay science!” being written on a picture of a wild animal, it’s “science” being celebrated for our mobile phones, or blamed for not having given us rocket packs. These things are, of course, technology, which, historical research suggests, is more likely to be a driver for than any kind of simple or direct outcome of science. If you really want a particular gadget what you need is goal-oriented R&D, not “science”.

Maybe these expanded definitions reflect a similar shorthand to the one I described for “history of science” above, or maybe they simply show that the word “science” continues to have fluctuating boundaries. But it is worth being clear what we’re talking about when “science” is used to create authority, leverage funding, concentrate concerns or promise solutions. So, while I don’t want to ban its use, let’s think what we really mean.

Heritage and the Royal Institution

Cross-posted from The H Word blog [first published 29 January 2013].

The Royal Institution in about 1838, by T H Shepherd. Source: Wikimedia Commons

It has been interesting to observe reactions to the recent news about the financial troubles at the Royal Institution potentially being so severe that they might have to sell their Georgian premises on Albemarle Street. There have been calls and petitions to save the building based on an appeal to history and nostalgia. Equally, there have been questions (e.g.here, here, and here) about the RI’s modern role and whether this is well-served by a vast Mayfair building and the traditions that it celebrates.

Without treading too far into the question of what the RI does or should do as an institution for the communication of science in the 21st century, it is worth thinking about it as a site of scientific heritage and ask what makes it unique and worth preserving even if the Royal Institution itself should cease to exist.

Scientific heritage can be a difficult thing to assess, preserve and interpret. Removed from their context, old scientific instruments are apt to lose much of their meaning. Those which survive in museums are often not those which were ever used, for outdated equipment tends to be replaced and thrown away. The large technology and infrastructure of modern science poses enormous challenges for collection and preservation. Buildings in which scientific work has been done are often unexciting architecturally and opaque to the uninitiated.

Unesco, responsible for the inscription of World Heritage, has recently begun to notice that scientific heritage is under-represented on its lists. The problems of aesthetics and size are pertinent, along with the fact that science is often not understood as a manifestation of human culture in the same way that palaces, art works or technological sites like bridges and railways are.

When Unesco weighs up the importance of world heritage, it does so with the aid of three categories: immovable, moveable and intangible heritage. The first includes buildings, monuments, sites and landscapes. Plainly some of these are movable, or at least alterable, but they are associated with a particular place and very often the linking of a set of buildings or their placing within a landscape lends them greater significance than they might have on their own.

Moveable heritage, broadly speaking, consists of things that could end up in museums, such as paintings, objets d’art, textiles, scientific instruments, furniture, books and manuscripts. While individual items of immovable heritage may be hugely important or valuable, their inclusion within a larger collection, or their placing within a particular location can greatly enhance their significance and meaning.

Finally, intangible heritage is the stuff that is harder to pin down. Unesco defines it as including “living expressions and the traditions that countless groups and communities worldwide have inherited from their ancestors and transmit to their descendants, in most cases orally”. Things inscribed as intangible heritage include dances, festivals, recipes and a bewildering variety of traditions.

Intangible ideas and traditions can also play an important role in assessing the significance of items in the other two categories. Given the fact that the history of science is associated with many intangibles (i.e. things that we no longer touch or hold) – such as people, ideas, skills, discussions and so on – it is clear that this third category can be an extremely useful concept to bear in mind.

Arguably, when all three of these types of heritage come together, we have something particularly valuable. I am lucky enough to work within a World Heritage Site which includes a site of outstanding scientific significance. The Royal Observatory includes buildings designed for science, which are enhanced by their housing historic instruments used on that site, and other wonderful objects. On top of this there are the intangibles associated with the work of the Astronomers Royal and with the concepts of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.

The RI has a similar combination. It has a building long used for scientific and related purposes, parts of which were designed specifically for their role – most obviously the lecture theatre. It also has significant book, object and archive collections, made more significant by their close association with the place in which they are displayed or stored.

The building and objects are associated with the intangibles surrounding the people and scientific research undertaken at the institution. While Faraday’s electrical work and the discovery of 10 elements are usually highlighted, there was a wide range of work done in analysis and testing materials and techniques, often for private or government clients.

In addition to this, of course, the RI had a key role to play in the story of the relationship between science and the public. It is hard to think of another historic site that has combined these roles over such a long period of time and, especially, one that is still inhabited by the same institution. The RI’s intangible heritage is undoubtedly heightened by this fact.

It is true that the RI’s primary audience was a privileged one, catering for a very different market to, say, popular attractions with scientific content or working men’s institutions. It is not, perhaps, a tradition we would be keen to perpetuate (and the RI certainly does not do so exclusively), but we can recognise that getting society leaders on board with the messages of Davy, Faraday and their successors was hugely significant for British science in the period of its nascent professionalisation.

While science communication and outreach can and should take place beyond such hallowed halls, there is benefit in having at least some of it flavoured and informed by science’s heritage. It reminds us that science is not disembodied, pure knowledge, but that it is created by people in particular times and places, with particular equipment and in response to the demands and possibilities of the society in which they inhabit. The heritage of the RI also shows that science has to be communicated – and that this is a business with a long and often rather repetitive back story from which audiences and communicators alike can learn.

The combination of types of unique scientific heritage at the Royal Institution should be cherished. I also suspect its continuity on one site both enhances its significance and may be the best chance of its preservation.

Science, the public and the history of science

Cross-posted from The H Word blog. This post relates to the Twitter spat that took place between various scientists, science advocates, historians, philosophers, communicators at the end of last year. For some context and links to other related posts, see Peter Brok’s post, notes and comments.

Some Twitter-types may have noticed that the New Statesman editorial by Brian Cox and Robin Ince on science, evidence and policy provoked some discussion and debate between the authors and various people loosely within the fields of History and Philosophy of Science and Science and Technology Studies.

One interesting post on the piece has been written by Jack Stilgoe here in the Guardian. Let me say straight up that, like Stilgoe, there was plenty I agree with in the piece. Particularly the meat of their article, in paragraphs 4 to 7, including the clear acknowledgement that science is work-in-progress and that it cannot be the only thing that policy-makers take into account.

Likewise, most of those engaged in the Twitter discussion would have been in complete agreement that science is an excellent way of producing evidence vital for informed policy and that the scientific evidence on climate change is clear.

So why the fuss? It was an opinion piece that discussed the nature of science and the role of science in society. These are areas that people in HPS and STS have devoted their careers to researching. The view of science that was presented here does not chime with the current consensus within these disciplines, and that naturally provoked a reaction – just as scientists are provoked to react by those who reject or ignore their research.

Both sides of this discussion have more in common than not, and the criticism was made in good faith and with a genuine belief that science, science communication and the use of scientific evidence in government policy, would benefit. We aim to aid, not to jeopardise understanding of scientific evidence, by following the evidence uncovered by our disciplines (and, yes, there are other kinds of evidence than scientific).

Broadly, my objections fall into two categories:

1. The piece suggests that science is separated from the “moral, geopolitical and economic components”, even if they rightly acknowledge that it must be part of policy-making

2. Some large and a-historical claims are made regarding changing attitudes to science and technology

On the first, I agree with what Stilgoe has written: “Climate science cannot be separated from climate politics”, for scientists are people and they are funded by people. Choices about scientific research and its interpretation are also influenced by geographic, economic, moral and other frameworks. Failing to acknowledge this places an impossible burden on science and its practitioners and inhibits good discussion around different kinds of evidence and opinion.

While there are lots of good phrases about this in the piece, it remains the case that we have scientific evidence on one side of the equation and everything else on the other. It is right to say that scientific evidence “should not be seen or presented … as a body of inviolate knowledge against which policy should be judged”, and yet it and “the scientific method” are given a unique place in this discussion. It is the only thing placed as an “adjudicator above opinion”, and they explicitly see a border between science and politics, even if it is portrayed as an unclear one.

The second issue arises in the article’s framing, especially the big opening: “The story of the past hundred years is one of unparalleled human advances, medically, technologically and intellectually. The foundation for these changes is the scientific method”. This was bound to get the historical and philosophical radar twitching, even if it seems peripheral to the focus of the piece.

“[U]nparalleled human advances” is questionable, for almost any other 100-year period can give a similar sense. In the West in recent centuries, science and technology have certainly played a huge part in those changes, but claiming that the kind of technological innovations Ince and Cox are referring to are due to “the scientific method” is something most scholarship in the history and philosophy of science rejects. Firstly, there are many scientific methods and many, when studied in detail, are not particularly methodological. Secondly, new technology tends to lead to new scientific research, rather than vice versa.

This is fairly trivial in the context, however galling to those who carry out research that demonstrates these points. However, more problematic is the fact that the piece goes on to claim that our cushy life and unquestioning consumption of incomprehensible technology is leading us to be less impressed by and accepting of such novelties. Apparently we are devolving:

The technology and advances in knowledge that cosset us have removed, to a large extent, the need to use our ingenuity and to think rationally. Believing complete drivel was once selected against; now it gets you an expert slot on daytime TV.

In fact, historical research suggests that levels of “believing complete drivel”, like those of greeting innovations with “excitement and awe” or boredom or suspicion have not changed a great deal. There is no evidence that “humbug and charlatanism are able to creep into our lives with greater ease”, and I have yet to find anyone arguing that “we are no longer obliged to continue the scientific exploration of nature” or that “scientific progress is no longer desirable or necessary”.

It is untrue and unhelpful to claim that those who question or ignore certain scientific findings are opposed to science in general. Such statements set up unnecessary dualisms and a “you’re either with us or against us” feeling. Frankly, if people only accept part of the package, better that than none. We need to avoid situations where people, who for whatever cultural, religious or personal reasons are unconvinced by scientific arguments in one area, find themselves forced into taking sides in a science/anti-science dichotomy.

How are we to proceed? We should simply accept that “It is not logical to challenge the findings of science unless there are specific, evidence-based reasons for doing so”. But the trouble is that people do challenge, and being told that they can’t isn’t likely to stop them. There is no call here to improve communication with those who have doubts about the message. In the end, we are left simply with “Believe us”.

Finally, I do think that scientists are better at science than me, and that successful science communicators are better at communicating science (to a large audience, if not to all audiences). I also think that when scientists, rightly, get involved with discussing the nature of science (philosophy) and its role in society (history, social sciences) they might accept that there are other realms of scholarship that have thought about these things long and hard, and have important things to add to the conversation.

Why women fade into the background on Wikipedia

Cross-posted from The H Word.

On Friday afternoon, the Royal Society hosts a group edit-a-thon aimed at improving Wikipedia articles about women in science. It is timed to link with Ada Lovelace Day earlier this week, an event that seeks to share stories about inspirational women in science.

Admitting that Wikipedia is a first port of call for most people looking for basic, and sometimes not so basic, biographical information, the event is an attempt to improve the quality of entries and raise the profile of women in science and engineering, both past and present. Not simply relying on other online resources, participants will be able to make use of the Royal Society’s unique collections, as well as its library staff and representatives of Wikipedia UK.

The society’s library is enjoying its 350th anniversary this year, although it is only for the past 67 years that women have been admitted as fellows. Despite increasing efforts to ensure a level playing field, female fellows are still a tiny minority, being only 5% of the total. Awareness of this disparity undoubtedly makes the Royal Society keen to focus on celebrating successful women in science and on inspiring the next generation.

The event itself raises some interesting themes and ideas. The most obvious is the fact that the contribution of women to science, and elsewhere, can be made more visible. Our view of what counts in thehistory of science is very much influenced by older assumptions and past prejudices. Prizes, publications, professional positions and fellowships are key markers, and automatically lead to commemoration of achievements in obituaries, which are the first drafts of future biographies. Women were, of course, generally barred from such recognition until all too recently.

Other markers, therefore, need to be sought and added into our accounts, and Wikipedia is the kind of cumulative and fluid environment in which this can be done.

When looking for the women, and for those other markers of eminence, researchers find themselves beginning to think about what counts as an important contribution to science in a slightly different way. There is, necessarily, less emphasis on the traditional roll call of theoretical advances (of the Copernicus-Kepler-Newton-Einstein variety) and an appreciation of the essential contribution that collectors, experimentalists, technicians, writers, translators, teachers and calculators have made.

This, by rights, should lead to the widening of the net of scientific biography to include a whole load of underappreciated men as well. Some, such as top instrument makers, were seen as being hugely skilful, knowledgeable and important in their day but are often poorly represented on Wikipedia. Others were not given the opportunities to be recognised or remembered, with lower class or non-European men being, like women, essentially disenfranchised.

This may appear to work against the spirit of the day, but is equally important in terms of appreciating the way science has really operated in history and how it generates knowledge, meaning, agreement and conflict across diverse societies today. For British women, however, it is possible that the most important aspect of the event will not be the making available of a little extra information about women scientists, but the focus on women as Wikipedia editors.

The dominance of men in the Wikipedia online community is well-documented and something that the company is attempting to address through its Gender Gap project. While coming in somewhat ahead of the proportion of female fellows of the Royal Society, in 2009 female Wikipedians were only around 13% of the active community.

Research suggests that this matters for a number of reasons, principally that male and female editors tend to focus on different content areas, that the coverage of topics more likely to be of interest to female users of Wikipedia is seen as inferior, and that Wikipedia is missing out on the successful development of its social and community areas.

There is also, particularly around more controversial topics, a tendency to macho behaviour among editors. Women, it turns out, are much less likely to edit articles in these areas and, if they do, their edits are more likely to be rejected. These rejections are often not to do with factual content, but differences in tone and approach.

This experience means that these women are very likely to back away from the whole project. In other words, women’s voices and views are seriously underrepresented, even when they might consider themselves experts in a particular area.

The Royal Society’s edit-a-thon will include a range of well-qualified and motivated women with an interest in making themselves, as well as women in the history of science, heard. Wikipedia will certainly benefit from developing an atmosphere that is more welcoming to women like these.

Finding women in the history of science

Cross-posted from The H Word (first published on 16 October 2012 – Ada Lovelace Day)

Margaret Bryan, portrayed here with her daughters, was a writer of popular scientific books and taught sciences at her school for girls. Source: Wikimedia

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, which has been marked annually since 2009 as a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. The Finding Ada website explains that “The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of women in STEM”.

Readers of some of my earlier posts - on the Tesla museum campaign, for example, or on whiggish and triumphalist histories - will be aware that I do not see the celebration of heroes in history and science as an uncomplicated matter. This is because, all too often, lionising a particular individual can lead to dismissing the contribution of others and, beyond that, a lack of appreciation of the very collaborative – or aggregating – nature of scientific work.

In fact, despite being named after a woman born in 1815, Ada Lovelace Day is less about heroines and history and more about sharing stories about women who have inspired others’ careers in STEM. This might be because of their achievements in science or because of their roles as teachers and mentors. Such factors can be of huge individual significance and, given that women are still sadly in the minority in the upper echelons of science, there is a lot of good to be done.

I have to admit, though, that I find the choice of Lovelace as the marker for this event slightly peculiar. She has become something of a cult heroine, claimed as the writer of the first computer programme, produced for Charles Babbage‘s never-realised Analytical Engine. But it is only very recently, with a lot of hindsight, that she has been an inspirational figure.

It is clear that Lovelace had a deep interest in and feeling for Babbage’s work and an ability in mathematics that few women in the early 19th century were able to demonstrate. However, it is also clear that Babbage indulged and flattered her because she had wealth and influence and, frankly, was one of a number of routes through which he could advertise his scheme. It is not the case that her programme was the first written for Babbage’s machine and there has been much doubt cast on the significance and originality of what she did produce.

One would think that there are many women who made more significant contributions in the history of science who might provide a better model. And yet, there is some good to be done in recalling Lovelace, and in seeking out women in the history of science, most of whom, before the 20th century and on the face of it, do not make the grade to be placed in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography without special pleading.

Because of their lack of education, and society’s expectations of their role as home-makers and child-rearers, there are vanishingly small numbers of pre-20th century women who made clearly-attributable, original and influential contributions to the content of scientific theory. However, recalling my earlier mention of the collaborative and aggregating nature of science, it is perhaps only our inheritance of older perspectives that leads us to place such work on a higher pedestal than other contributions.

It takes all kinds of skills and input from people from across society for scientific ideas to be developed, used and shared. And what is an idea without this? Many of the women who are recalled in the history of science were translators, teachers, writers, collectors and illustrators. These were the kinds of roles that women could undertake without disapproval, and they are ones that really are essential to the development of science and should not be too quickly dismissed.

Seeking women in the history of science, we find a significant number who were able to make their mark as assistants or collaborators to their fathers, husbands and brothers. In many cases the true significance of their input may be hard to uncover but, even if simply amanuenses, secretaries or sounding-boards, their contribution may have been absolutely necessary. We will also find some – a very few – who took on paid work of a scientific nature: undertaking calculations, perhaps, or making instruments. Skilled work that played its part in developing a society dependent on science and technology.

Lovelace made her mark both in the early 19th century and today as someone who was enthused by and championed a particular technological and mathematical vision. Cheerleaders in influential places have always been essential too. But today, as I host a Finding Ada event, I will be recalling the many, apparently minor, roles that women have taken on, for science is not just made by the big names. I will also be celebrating the fact that today, at last, the big names may increasingly be female ones.

Grantham celebrates Isaac Newton

Cross-posted from The H Word.

The 1858 statue of Isaac Newton, by William Theed, in Grantham. Photograph: Wikimedia

In a recent post on this site, Stuart Clark introduced the Gravity Fields Festival, and the complexity of the figure it celebrates – Isaac Newton. The festival, being held in Grantham, where Newton went to school, runs until Friday 28 September. Its theme is Newton and science, but it is an arts as well as a science festival, with plenty of history and heritage thrown in for good measure.

Thus there is room for museums, archives, galleries, music, history, theatre and events in an eclectic range of venues. My talk on Monday, on Newton’s public and prolonged interest in the very practical topic of maritime navigation, was undoubtedly improved by being in a pub. Elsewhere, Grantham’s schoolchildren have been introduced to novel spaces: an apothecary’s shop and an alchemist’s laboratory.

Grantham, of course, has long celebrated its connection with Newton. The nearby Woolsthorpe and its apple tree have been a pilgrimage site from at least the later 18th century, with visitors often making off with a few leaves or even roots. One of Newton’s earliest biographers, William Stukeley, visited the area to talk to people who remembered the young Newton. His unpublished memoir, which recorded some of the most memorable Newtonian anecdotes, has been digitised and can be read on the Royal Society’s website.

The townspeople’s own sense that their most famous son should be celebrated publicly developed in the 19th century. Thus, well over a century before the classic Isaac Newton Shopping Centre was built, a bronze statue was raised. This was to be a moment of national as well as local significance for Grantham. Thus just as in 2012 South Kesteven District Council has enticed luminaries including Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and former president of the Royal Society, in 1858 Grantham Town Council hosted the then president of the society, Benjamin Brodie, and a flock of eminent visitors from Oxbridge and the metropolis

The guest of honour and keynote speaker was Lord Brougham, a former lord chancellor who had just published an analysis of Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Representatives of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science were also present. Flanked by boys of the grammar school and the townspeople of Grantham, it was a spectacle impressive enough to be engraved for the pages of the Illustrated London News.

It included an element that could never be repeated today. As well as a president and assorted fellows, the Royal Society sent along a chair believed to have belonged to Newton (on which Brougham sat), and three treasured relics that were paraded through the town. They were Newton’s reflecting telescope, his prism and a first edition copy of Principia, carried on cushions and then set up, in open air, before the statue.

Although such objects would never be treated in this fashion today, Grantham has nevertheless imported a number of treasures. Perhaps most impressively, the National Portrait Gallery has loaned portraits for display in Belton House. The scale and scope of the celebrations are, of course, much greater than the 1858 event. As a finale, it is the ambition of Gravity Fields to transform the town – “Grantham as you have never seen it!” – this Friday. Weather permitting, a pedestrianised town centre will “come alive with Newton themed processions, aerial displays, light projections and … performers”.

Back in the 1850s the former mayor of Grantham, Thomas Winter, had claimed that “All civilized nations may … claim an interest in Newton” and lauded him as a benefactor, philosopher and man of science, “no mere flash of genius, but the steady process of untiring industry” and not just wise, but “the most practical of philosophers”. Everyone should appreciate and revere his memory.

Such heroes are much less relevant to our times. The Gravity Fields Festival has been considerably more of the “warts and all” approach to Newton’s life and personality, recalling his enmities, frailties, and interest in alchemy and revelation as well as optics and mathematics. It nevertheless demonstrates that Newton, and the whole range of things his life and after-life are associated with, can generate an interesting, eclectic, non-reverential and inspiring series of events.

Cutting a dash: men of science as ‘historical hotties’

I had a bit of fun this week tweeting links to portraits of some 19th-century men of science, suggesting that they were ’19thC scientific hotties’. Such a phrase is not, I should add, my usual vocabulary, and nor is a focus on people’s looks. And thus explanation is in order. My tweets brought a response from Vanessa Heggie - “trying to tell myself this ‘historical hotties’ thing is OK, as is clearly subversion of patriarchal power” – and linking to Bangable Dudes in History.  Was I making a feminist point? Or was I objectifying these men in a way that I would naturally find uncomfortable if it were living women? Was I, perhaps, attempting to claim that men of science can be attractive, in some sort of historical, masculine version of the (for me) dubious Cheerleaders for Science.

I was, in fact, playing with a few ideas that I didn’t want to develop in 140-character chunks on Twitter. One was exploring this as a hook for introducing less-well-known scientific figures to an unsuspecting public, another was thinking about how such men chose to be portrayed in their lifetimes, and the third was my own response to these portraits, and how they may have coloured views of these historical characters.

The whole thing started in response to this post by Beth Dunn on Thomas Say and the utopian project that had Robert Owen sending a ‘Boatload of Knowledge‘ – in the form of men of science, writers and artists – to New Harmony in the mid-West. It was not Beth’s contention, but someone had suggested that Say was a “19th century hottie”. I retweeted the post, but also suggested that I had another favourite portrait of a man of science and adventurer, the NMM’s portrait of James Clark Ross by John R. Wildman.

Ross, who travelled to both the Arctic and Antarctic, located the north magnetic pole and carried out a huge range of scientific observations, was reckoned by Jane Franklin ”the handsomest man in the navy”. He was the “scientific serviceman” par excellance: a heroic naval figure who could cut a dash and demonstrate his manly devotion to nation in time of peace. He’s fascinating, but I don’t fancy him (he’s dead, for a start), I just love the portrait: a Romantic shock of dark hair, passionate glance, icebergs, polar bearskin, Pole Star and, beautifully delineated in the foreground, an instrument known as a dip circle, used to measure variation in magnetic inclination.

As my tweet got a reasonable response, I followed it up over the next couple of days with links to Thomas Phillips’ portrait of Michael Faraday and Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Henry Brougham. Again, these are Romanticised images of men who, in very different ways, took on public roles that were undoubtedly enhanced by their intelligence and charismatic personalities. Faraday was, of course, a star public lecturer (the Brian Cox of his day, dare I say?) as well as a hugely important figure in the history of chemistry and physics. Although modest and discrete, he certainly knew – or learned – how to capture his audiences through look, voice and gesture as well as knowledge and dexterity. Brougham, in reality, was probably no looker but I was captured by his portrait when it was displayed in a NPG exhibition, The British Portrait 1660-1960, way back in 1991 (when I just about knew of the Great Reform Act, but had never heard of history of science). It is Lawrence at his best: capturing a light of fierce intelligence in the eye of this young, ambitious, passionate lawyer.

I think I would have to admit, if challenged, that my knowledge of these portraits probably pre-disposed me to some level of sympathy for the sitters. Quite probably it was more than I might have felt had I first seen their much later photographic portraits. It’s never nice to admit, but looks and first impressions inevitably colour our impressions of people and, I think, the same can be true of those we meet through paintings and archives, although better acquaintance can often override early opinions. Other times, an interest, familiarity or admiration can build up from knowledge of the archive, only to be challenged when finally seeing a portrait that misses by a country mile the mental image built up.

What interests me particularly about these portraits, and others of the period like Humphry Davy or William Whewell, is that they depict relatively young men, in a period when youth, imagination, intellect and genius were unabashedly romanticised and celebrated. Although there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, before this date portraits often appear more formal, and later the dominance of photography brings a distinctly unflattering stiffness or realism to our heroes. By and large, too, men of science tended not to have portraits done until they had reached rich or honoured old age, usually long after their best work was behind them. And how much do they affect our assumptions? Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal is usually thought of as dull, plodding, uptight and downright grumpy. There is certainly plenty of this in what his wrote in old age, and it is underlined by our best-known image of him, a frontispiece to a posthumous volume, but do we think a little more kindly of him when presented with his more youthful image?

These themes are particularly pertinent in a museum setting. People and the personal are very often dominant in our displays, either reflecting the kind of material that has been collected (relics, provenances) or assumptions about how audiences best respond to the themes we are treating. If you want people to care about the bunch of stuff (scientific instruments, documents, tools, trinkets, whatever) we are showing, the usual tactic is to provide a name, some biography and a portrait. If those portraits evoke sympathy and interest, all the better. Thus, while I have concluded that my ’19thC scientific hotties’ are not the answer to eschewing anniversaries as a hook for introducing my historic characters, I nevertheless found it helpful to think about personal reactions to these images, with their ability – part of their original intention – to inspire the viewer with a whole range of emotions.

Inside a Herbarium

This week I had the pleasure of seeing inside the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. I have, very often and from earliest childhood, enjoyed walking in the gardens and hothouses, but this was the first time I had entered the Herbarium buildings – the real heart of the enterprise, as my host rightly stressed.

The New Herbarium is pleasing 1960s architecture, that does not look out of place among the wide range of historic and modern buildings in the gardens. A place that serves the needs of modern science, described by the RBGE as “a collection of preserved plants stored, catalogued and arranged systematically for study by both professional taxonomists (scientists who name plants), botanists and amateurs”, it is a working reference collection, arranged by modern taxonomy and geographical area. Each species is represented by many examples including, of course, type specimens – the reference point for a newly discovered species. There is an online catalogue and an expanding digitisation project.

It is also a treasure-trove of history. The list of major collectors who contributed to the Edinburgh herbarium cross more than two centuries. While is was not founded until the mid-19th century, it incorporated collections from the University and Botanical Society that dated back significantly earlier. I was there to see specimens collected in the Arctic on the voyages of scientific exploration led by William Parry (below) in the 1820s. On the first expedition he led, aimed chiefly at locating the North West Passage, Parry and his crew received a reward of £5000 for reaching 110⁰ West within the Arctic Circle, as specified by the 1818 Longitude Act. Like other Arctic voyages of this period, the Board of Longitude also lent and advised on instruments and techniques.

As with all such high-status voyages, they combined strategic, political, commercial and scientific objectives. They undertook to observe, record and collect whatever they could, both relying on newfangled instruments and subjecting them to test. Naval officers and crew were supplemented with astronomers and surgeons acting as naturalists – although the officers too were becoming specialists, with many contributing not only to surveys but to the botanic, zoological and oceanographic work, and Parry himself returning to become Hydrographer of the Navy.

Indeed, it is notable that the Navy seems by this date to have taken on much of the scientific expertise that, in the days of Cook, had been brought in from outside. Trevor H. Levere’s Science and the Canadian Arctic tells us that it was Parry, rather than the Royal Society or Board of Longitude, who drafted the scientific instructions for the voyage and superintended work during the voyage. He insisted on careful field notes, saying “nothing is to be trusted to memory”.

It was, presumably, this instruction that led to a number of field notes that I was able to see in Edinburgh. While many specimens have been remounted on standard-sized paper to form part of the main Herbarium collection, thus losing a sense of the original mounting and sometimes related notes, there are three small collections relating to Parry voyages that – as duplicates of other specimens at Edinburgh and the Natural History Museum – were left on their original small-sized sheets.

In this sheet, you can see four small folded-over sheets containing specimens. The one opened reveals that it was collected at Repulse Bay in 1821, on Parry’s second Arctic expedition. The species name, Epilobium Latifolium, appears in a different ink, presumably written shortly after. It is, Wikipedia tells me, the former name of Dwarf Fireweed (Chamerion latifolium), said to be an extremely nutritious supplement to meals of blubber. (In the Herbarium itself, I was also shown the locker of specimens of some anti-scorbutic member of the cabbage family, many also collected in the Arctic, and still smelling of old school dinners!).

The closed specimen folders on the sheet in my photograph carry the brief field notes, some evidently written in retrospect, although perhaps still on board ship: “Found in most places that we visited”; “Not very abundant, but generally met with in our visits to the shore” etc. The notes, presumably, were kept by the person recorded at the front of this collection, Lieut. William Harvey Hooper, the expedition’s Purser. His expedition journals are at the the Royal Geographical Society, I note, so further detail on his process of collecting and recording could, no doubt, be uncovered.

You might just spy in this photograph another label, dated 1944. This relates to some former cataloguing of the specimens, and is very typical of Herbarium collections. This is another reason why they are historically so fascinating. Not only can we recapture something about the particular expedition – information of use to historians of science and to scientists studying changes in plants, their distribution and climate over time – but we can also learn about the afterlife of the specimens themselves.

Although now in the same place, sheets in the Herbarium show us that specimens from expeditions were distributed to a variety of locations. They reveal the networks of collectors, academics and institutions that mattered, both for official purposes and sometimes more personal ties. These maritime expeditions could amass and transport enough specimens for a number of deposits, personal collections and friendly exchanges. The added notes and labels also tell us about the history of herbaria themselves – many being left by bequest, closed or amalgamated – and practices of the botanists who worked in them. A single box of a single species might cross centuries and paint a complex geographical picture, not only reflecting the origins of the various specimens, but the veritable dance each undertook as it was transferred from collector to collector, collection to collection.

There is much there that appears ripe for analysis by historians of science. The initial impression of historical information lost in the act of scientific cataloguing is overcome when early catalogues, correspondence and information on the specimen sheets themselves are brought together. Such work has been done for some of the most famous collections – the most high profile example perhaps being the Hans Sloane Herbarium at the Natural History Museum – but what of these relics of the work, collections and networks of 19th and 20th-century botanical collectors and taxonomers?

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Edit: I have also written a post relating to this visit over on the Longitude Project Blog, with some other and further thoughts linking more precisely to the project and exhibition work. It has another image of a Parry specimen, this time from the Herbarium proper.

A conversation about science and progress

A couple of evenings ago an interesting conversation developed on twitter, between me (@beckyfh), Thomas Soderqvist (@museionist), Thony Christie (@rmathematicus), James Poskett (@jamesposkett) on science and progress. It all started with a query from Danny Birchall:

(@dannybirchall): Choosing images for online galleries. Is it useful to highlight racist elements in the history of science? #histsci

When I asked for more details he told me that the exhibition was “about material culture of the brain; context is faux-measurement of brain capacity/function. shd definitely explain racism (tweet). After another couple of tweets, Danny wrote “I think what I’m trying to ask (in the abstract) is, is it useful in histsci to show … (tweet) … how ideas that we now find repellent are intimately intertwined with the ‘progress’ of science? (tweet). I replied:

(@beckyfh): @dannybirchall I think it’s absolutely essential to show that science has never been one long, straightforward, ‘clean’ story of progress

(@beckyfh): @dannybirchall Racism, imperialism, sexism etc are as implicated in history of science as any other part of history, as it’s a human product

At this point Thomas entered the conversation:

(@museionist): @beckyfh @dannybirchall Equally senseless to deny progress in sci; such denial was a dogma among historians of sci from 1970s to early 2000s

And thus the conversation was kicked off. Apologies if I’ve missed out any important tweets from the conversation below, and for it getting confusing where parallel discussions developed. I’ve had to play with the order a bit to make these make sense.

(@beckyfh): @museionist No, not denying progress, depending on definitions! Bt complexity, dead-end, retrograde, morally dubious etc too @dannybirchall

(@beckyfh): @rmathematicus But also senseless to assume all areas & questions in science have progressed uniformly, inevitably (or at all?) @museionist

(@museionist): @beckyfh @rmathematicus Who’s suggested uniform progress? That’s a strawman’s counterargument against the general progress claim

(@beckyfh): @museionist There ate [are] plenty of people who assume inevitable progress in science. It’s still an attitude worth countering IMO @rmathematicus

(@museionist): @beckyfh @rmathematicus The debate easily falls into extremes: denial of progress vs inevitable progress

(@beckyfh): @museionist Which is the joy, and importance, of complexity! The question, though, is how to sell that. @rmathematicus

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @museionist Tend to agree. History of science needs to escape its negative ‘progress is problematic’ mode.

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett How about my more positive “it’s excitingly, confusingly and unexpectedly complex” approach? @rmathematicus @museionist

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @museionist Sounds better! I guess I’d prefer less focus on progress & more on specific exciting problems.

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @museionist Like “How did science come to make global claims?” (my own interest) rather than “Did science progress?”

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett This is more or less where I came into histsci: “how did science achieve its status & authority?” @rmathematicus @museionist

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @museionist That’s an exciting and complex question! I see much more value in that than the (strawman?) of progress.

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett Well, one thing that gave science authority was its narrative of progress! @rmathematicus @museionist

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @museionist That’s great! Can’t disagree. Harder to ignore the subject than I’d like it seems!

(@rmathematicus): @jamesposkett @beckyfh @museionist Progress exists but it is almost never linear and it can oft only be recognized with hindsight

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett @museionist The question is how to control the complexity so that one can say anything at all

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett I get criticised for arguing that irrational subjects such as astrology have helped science to progress 1/2

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett “It gives people the wrong impression” What is the right impression? 2/2

(@beckyfh): @rmathematicus Anyone who argues that has the wrong impression of how science works & they should be told so! @jamesposkett

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett Going back to complexity. Any presentation of the history of science is a simplification at what level does 1/2

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett the simplification become unacceptable? 2/2

(@beckyfh): @rmathematicus Depends on what you’re trying to achieve. On 1 level there’s merit in just showing science is a human activity @jamesposkett

(@rmathematicus): @beckyfh @jamesposkett @museionist I think authority is assumed to come from science’s claim to provide ‘truth’.

(@beckyfh): @rmathematicus And one piece of evidence for its ‘truthfulness’ is progress… @jamesposkett @museionist

(@dhayton): @rmathematicus @beckyfh @jamesposkett @museionist is it interesting to think about how authority allows science to provide “truth”?

James and I had a bit of a side conversation, on the subject of whether there’s a simplistic popular notion of scientific progress, even if the subject is a bit passe in scholarly circles:

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett Thing is, by and large people (as opposed to historians of science) still assume neat progress. They therefore don’t see…1/2

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett …a reason to question/ discuss/take an interest in science & policy for science. I still find it worth arguing 2/2

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh I’m just a bit overeager to push past it! BBC and Guardian don’t push progress much now (tho I agree with you, this leaves a lot.)

(@beckyfh): @jamesposkett Interesting. Sure you’re right, tho doesn’t always feel that way! But any ‘progress’ on this must be result of pushing view?

(@jamesposkett): @beckyfh I concede news is often muddied by popular metaphors which skirt round the issue of progress: approximating the truth etc.

That was more or less it for the night. Thomas had long left us for a book and bed. However, bright and early the next morning:

(@museionist): @beckyfh @rmathematicus @jamesposkett Good morning: I think we need to discuss the meaning of the word ‘progress’ in the history of science

I hazarded the following:

(@beckyfh): @museionist i think most wd see progress in sci as knowing more, knowing better, being able to make better use @rmathematicus @jamesposkett

Thony agreed, but there we left it. So: what do we mean by progress in science? Is there a simplistic view of progress that exists generally, and is it worthwhile trying to point out that the picture is a great deal more complex? Did historians of science in the 1970s-90s really believe that there was no such thing as progress in science? Do some still believe it now? How should we deal with progress in science as opposed to progress in technology?

Answers below, please.

Wanting to believe

Sometimes, the extent to which people see what they wish to see seems truly remarkable. However, we shouldn’t be surprised that this very human affliction affects even those with a training or long practice in observation and logic. An article in the Observer this Sunday discussed one of the more famous cases of a forgery convincing those who wanted to be convinced. This was the 1912 archaeological hoax known as Piltdown Man, which seems to have been accepted as genuine by a number of experts largely because they really wanted to be able to put both British archaeology and early British inhabitants on the map. A remarkable, unique find that suggested that early British man had a larger brain than the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals currently being found to international acclaim on the Continent was, perhaps, too good a story to resist.

Piltdown Man was accepted as a genuine specimen for 40 years, despite the fact that when the finds were first published one individual suggested that it looked rather like a modern human skull with a chimpanzee jawbone. When it was reviewed again in the 1950s it looked like a pretty cheap and obvious forgery. It seems that a lack of relevant expertise in Britain at the time, perhaps together with an unarticulated desire not to ask too many questions and, possibly, even some conspiracy amongst museum curators led to this collective turning of blind eyes. The Natural History Museum and Southampton University will now carrying out research to find out more about the creation of the hoax, just in time for its centenary.

At least the hoaxed were in it together on this occasion. Some time back I wrote about a history of science forgery that fooled only one individual: an eminent man who perhaps should have known better but who wanted to believe, then wanted to believe that he had not been taken advantage of, then finally had to reveal that he had spent large sums of money and staked his reputation on an elaborate, but surely unconvincing series of forged documents. This was Michel Chasles, professor of geometry at the Sorbonne and early expert in the history of mathematics (and, judging by this picture, alarming-looking individual), who collected old mathematical texts and manuscripts but, with one rogue dealer, got out of his depth.

Chasles brought the first of his astonishing finds to the Académie française, and they were published in the institution’s journal, Comptes rendus. They were a number of notes and letters addressed to Robert Boyle and signed ‘Pascal’. They immediately provoked intense criticism but were, for two years, staunchly defended by Chasles, who produced more and more letters to back up an unlikely story. An increasingly complex alternative reality in the history of science was being developed, in which Pascal had discovered gravity, having previously been in communication with Galileo, who had only feigned blindness to get better treatment from the Inquisition. It was a French nationalist illusion then ended up including letters purportedly from a bewildering variety of individuals. At home, it turned out, Chasles had letters from not only the whole history of science, but also French royalty, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene and Joan of Arc.

It can all be read about in Henri Leonard Bordier and Emile Mabille, Une Fabrique de Faux Autographes, Paris, 1870 (published in English as The Prince of Forgers), who explained that Chasles was “naturally imbued with the desire to prove a thesis, [and] saw only that which agreed with his argument”. The forger, Vrain-Denis Lucas, who was sentenced to two years in prison with the words “You have abused in the most brazen manner the passion of an old man, of a scholar, his passion as a collector and his love for his country, in order to deceive him shamefully”. Lucas should have top marks for effort, a B+ for locating sources, and a C- for palaeography: this image compares a Lucas ‘Pascal’ document with a genuine manuscript.

The episode is particularly fascinating when we look at how scholars tried to prove Chasles wrong. Like palaeontology in the early 20th century, in the 19th century the serious study of historical documents, especially scientific manuscripts, was still in relative infancy. The scientific minds of the Académie tried ink testing, but the results actually turned out to back Chasles. Others considered handwriting, but this was tricky in a period when access to original material for comparison was difficult, and there were few photographs or facsimiles. This, therefore, left the content, but this required a sophisticated knowledge of the genuine source material. It was a challenge to the relatively few individuals who, at this period, might be considered historians of science.

A pretty unambiguous approach was taken by the Glasgow professor of astronomy, and author of History of the Physical Sciences, Robert Grant, who showed that the dataset in the spurious letter post-dated the real Pascal. David Brewster, biographer of Newton, focused on rescuing his hero’s reputation, working from his detailed knowledge of the archive. Thomas Archer Hirst spotted passages copied directly from later publications. Augustus De Morgan, as was his wont, had fun spotting a range of entertaining and obscure historical errors. These, together with the challenges put forward in Paris from Prosper Faugère and Urbain Le Verrier, and the facsimiles created by Bordier and Mabille, were conclusive, and lessons were learned in the scholarly and bibliographic world – we hope.

The story is not quite complete, though: a final, interesting twist has just come to my notice. Back in 2004, Ken Alder published “History’s Greatest Forger: Science, Fiction, and Fraud along the Seine“ in the journal Critical Inquiry. In this he writes: “Last year, while on academic leave in France, I discovered a letter in a Paris archive…”. This was a letter from the forger Lucas, explaining his motivation, translated by Alder. Today, I noticed that the Wikipedia articles for Lucas and Chasles both refer to this “recently uncovered” letter.

At the time that this article appeared, Alder had begun researching his book The Lie Detectors (2007). Read the Lucas letter, and have a think for yourself, noting that it ends with a quotation from Oscar Wilde:

After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once.