Essential Information
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Royal Observatory
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16 Aug 2011
Welcome to the 38th edition of The Giant's Shoulders, the history of science blog carnival. Because this month it is hosted here on the Longitude Project blog, it seemed apt that it should have a Georgian focus, this being a period (1714-1830) almost exactly contemporaneous with the lifespan of the Board of Longitude. Interestingly, though, the 18th century appears to be even longer than these 116 years, as this brief post on The Looooooooooooong 18th Century at The Dustshoveller's Gazette suggests. At the very least, therefore, we can agree that the 18th century runs from 1660-1832, can we not? And, if so, why not 1600-1900? Very little escapes my net...
The honorary Georgians...
A huge figure (in more ways than one) for our project is Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and over at Ether Wave Propaganda, Will Thomas introduces him with a useful Primer based on the accounts by Harold Carter and John Gascoigne. Equally close to our hearts, of course, is John Harrison, who appears in different guise in 'Infamous Cambridge Craft indeed!' posted at Whipple Library Blog, which looks at his "purported 'secret discovery' of the 'true scale or basis of musick'".
Moving to the earth sciences, David Bressan at History of Geology looks at the interpretation of fossils as the 18th century gave way to the 19th: In Megalonyx We Trust: Jefferson's patriotic monsters. He looks at the political and theological motivations behind Thomas Jefferson's views, which populated the vast, unknown wilderness of the American west with unimaginable beasts. (David has also been busy at Scientific American: Its sedimentary, my dear Watson looks at early forensic science from a geological perspective.)
Providentia brings us The Hanged Man, which looks at resuscitation in 18th-century London. Fascinatingly, the physicians William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, who founded the Royal Humane Society, offered a cash prize to anyone who could successfully revive a drowning victim. The famous surgeon John Hunter, offered advice, in part gained through his experience of dealing with the hanged until (not quite) dead.
The 18th century world of science would be nothing, of course without a mention of Erasmus Darwin. He is introduced in two posts inspired by Desmond King-Hele's biography: a review by Ian Hopkinson at SomeBeans and in Charles Darwin's Grandfather at Latest Breaking News.
Not quite Georgian, but possibly Longitudinarian, was my post over on the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog, marking the ROG's birthday: 336 today. However, rather than focusing on the reasons for the Observatory's foundation (the "much-desired longitude"), the post highlights the fact that John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, cast a horoscope for the time that the foundation stone was laid (10 August 1675 at 3.14pm).
Not quite Georgian, but possibly Longitudinarian, was my post over on the Royal Observatory Greenwich blog, marking the ROG's birthday: 336 today. However, rather than focusing on the reasons for the Observatory's foundation (the "much-desired longitude"), the post highlights the fact that John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, cast a horoscope for the time that the foundation stone was laid (10 August 1675 at 3.14pm).
And the rest....
Over on the Royal Society's History of Science blog, Rupert Baker shows us A ting or two dat bees do, with a unique 1634 book that combined beekeeping and reformed spelling, while James Poskett has been musing on the history and future of Remembering (and forgetting) 'women in science', while One 'woman in science' most often remembered for being just that is celebrated at Athene Donald's Blog: the ladylike and demure, but fiercely intelligent Mary Somerville. Clearly far less ladylike was Clemence Royer, who produced the first, idiosyncratic, French translation of Darwin's Origin. She is discussed in a fascinating post on the Darwin and Gender blog as "One of the cleverest and oddest women in Europe".
Meanwhile, I've been busy on my personal blog, Teleskopos, writing on the British Society for the History of Science's annual conference in A Great Devonian conference, thinking about science museums and collections in Object lessons, and considering presentism, whiggishness and some rather exemplary Victorian history of science in Ploughing with historical heifers.This last post was noted, and embellished, at the New APPS blog, in Higgitt's historical heifer.
The British Society for the History of Science itself has recently got into blogging, in the form of the Travel Guide to history of science sites. Posts published this month include Charles Darwin
in Cambridge, by Michael Barton, and the Albert Einstein Memorial in Washington, D.C., by Paul Halpern.
If you enjoyed The Hanged Man post linked above, you might also like Opening up the Dead: Autopsies and Dissections in Early Modern England posted at The Chirurgeon's Apprentice. As well as detailing the differences between autopsies (private) and dissections (public), this post points out that "The sensory experiences of the chirurgeon working in the seventeenth century must have differed greatly from those of the medical student today".
This month, Ptak Science Books has brought us some great posts that make use of Victorian Punch illustrations that evoke fantastic and futuristic worlds, where science and the glorious mysteries of electricity are triumphant: Prometheus Unbound; or, the Triumph of Science in Olympus and the wonderful Edison's Anti-Gravity Underwear Kite Babies, both from 1879.
And some quick links....
Thoughts on measurement and architecture appear in An ancient Egyptian protractor? posted by Jo Marchant at Decoding the Heavens.
Lord have mercy on us! posted at Shakespeare's England, on the shocking statistics of the 1660s plague, and some supposed preventatives.
A Mutual Divide: Experiment vs. (Cartesian) Speculation in Mid-Seventeenth Century Dutch Medicine posted at Early Modern Experimental Philosophy.
The History Page: Father of the 'candid' posted at The Daily, on the American chemist who became the first to photograph a human being.
Peter Kjaegaard reviewed W.F. Bynum and Caroline Overy's Michael Foster and Thomas Henry Huxley, Correspondence, 1865-1895, which is available online: "This is progress and we should be happy for it".
Some mid-19th-century palaeontology in O.C. Marsh, Before the Bone Wars, courtesy of Brian Switek at Wired Science.
Rhett Alain celebrated the centenary of The Rutherford Model of the Atom at Wired Science.
Dr Sky Skull has been looking into the origins of "invisibility physics", linking back to some of Newton's experiments: Isaac Newton? Father of invisibility physics?
Chemical Romance: The Loves of Dmitri Mendeleev, Part 1 from Eric Michael Johnson's Primate Diaries at Scientific American.
Find out more about Biography and Psychology II: George Savage (1842 - 1921) at the Bethlem Blog.
The Voice of the People posted at The Quack Doctor, on an advert for the very famous Beecham's Pills.
Survival of the aptest: evolutionary turns of phrase and Darwin: serial plagiarizer or revolutionary genius? both appear at The Rough Guide to Evolution.
Ants and Their Castes in the Spencer-Weismann Controversy, which took place at the end of the 19th century, appears at Kele's Science Blog.
Surely, Not Eugenics Again? An Introduction to 20th Century College Biology Textbooks, fromTextbook History, looks at the priority given to eugenics across a number of texts.
The Songbirds and Satellites blog is Deep in the Wonder of Book Knowledge after spending time researching the 1920s-30s Cotsen Children's Library series.
With apologies to the lack of images (due to technical issues beyond my control and capabilities), and thanks to all those who submitted posts to the BlogCarnival site, especially Thony Christie and Michael Barton!