Humboldtian Science Revisited: An Australian Case Study

Cannon Susan Faye , Science in culture: The early Victorian period (New York, 1978), 105.

Ibid., 115.

Cannon notes that William Goetzmann used the term “Humboldtean science” well before she adopted it in a slightly different spelling, but argues convincingly that beneath surface appearances they are talking about very different things (ibid., 77–78). Nathan Reingold some years earlier identified a tradition in nineteenth-century physical science bearing certain resemblances to the one characterized by Cannon, for which he proposed the name “applied astronomy”: Reingold , “Cleveland Abbe at Pulkowa: Theory and practice in the nineteenth century physical sciences”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xvii (1964), 133–47, reprinted as pp. 96–109 in his Science, American style (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).

Quoted by Cannon , op. cit. (ref. 1), 81. For Cannon, professionalism in science is a time- and context-dependent notion, by no means necessarily related to mere pecuniary considerations. In Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, she argues, “a professional scientist was characterized by the facts that he was involved in an endeavour of recognized social status and that he recognized its own standards of merit”; he was “distinguished … by his long-term attention to science … as his major activity, by his technical expertise, and by the number and quality of his accomplishments” (ibid., 150).

Ibid., 77.

Ibid., 95.

Morrell Jack Thackray Arnold , Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), 354, 426, 477, 491, 512–31.

Livingstone David N. , The geographical tradition: Episodes in the history of a contested enterprise (Oxford, 1992), 126, 137–8.

Levere Trevor H. , “Elements in the structure of Victorian science or Cannon revisited”, in North J. D. Roche J. J. (eds), The light of nature: Essays in the history and philosophy of science presented to A. C. Crombie (Dordrecht, 1985), 433–49; Nicolson Malcolm , “Alexander von Humboldt, Humboldtian science and the origins of the study of vegetation”, History of science, xxv (1987), 167–94.

Miller David Philip , “The Royal Society of London, 1800–1835: A study in the cultural politics of scientific organization”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1981, chapter 3.

Fleming James Rodger , Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Baltimore, 1990), 48, citing Cawood John , “Terrestrial magnetism and the development of international collaboration in the early nineteenth century”, Annals of science, xxxiv (1977), 551–87.

I have discussed elsewhere the process of professionalization of the physics community in Australia: Home R. W. , “The beginnings of an Australian physics community”, in Reingold Nathan Rothenberg Marc (eds), Scientific colonialism: A cross-cultural comparison (Washington, 1987), 3–34; idem, “Origins of the Australian physics community”, Historical studies (Melbourne), xxix (1982–83), 383–400; and idem, “Between classroom and industrial laboratory: The emergence of physics as a discipline in Australia”, Australian physicist, xx (1983), 163–7.

Laurie Philip S. , “William Dawes, and Australia's first observatory”, Quarterly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, xxix (1988), 469–82; also McAfee Robert , Dawes' meteorological journal (Canberra, 1981).

The vast difference between late eighteenth-century meteorology and that of Humboldt and his contemporaries is discussed by Feldman Theodore S. , “Late Enlightenment meteorology”, in Frängsmyr Tore Heilbron J. L. Rider Robin E. (eds), The quantifying spirit in the 18th century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 143–77.

Cawood John , “The magnetic crusade: Science and politics in early Victorian Britain”, Isis, lxx (1979), 493–518; Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 7), 512ff.

For a description of the instruments, see Savours Ann McConnell Anita , “The history of the Rossbank Observatory, Tasmania”, Annals of science, xxxix (1982), 527–64, pp. 546–51. Their manner of use is set out in great detail in Revised instructions for the use of the magnetic and meteorological observatories and for the magnetic surveys, prepared by the Committee of Physics and Meteorology of the Royal Society (London, 1842). Lloyd's extensive correspondence, now preserved at the Royal Society of London, details the care he put into this work. More detailed accounts of the magnetometers and the context in which they were used have been provided by O'Hara James Gabriel , “Gauss and the Royal Society: The reception of his ideas on magnetism in Britain (1832–1842)”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxviii (1983), 17–78, and Multhauf Robert P. Good Gregory , A brief history of geomagnetism and a catalog of the collections of the National Museum of American History (Washington, 1987).

Report of the President and Council of the Royal Society on the instructions to be prepared for the scientific expedition to the Antarctic regions (London, 1839), 8.

Savours McConnell , op. cit. (ref. 16), 536–7; Fitzpatrick Kathleen , Sir John Franklin in Tasmania, 1837–1843 (Melbourne, 1949), 245–9; Hoare Michael E. , ‘“All things are queer and opposite’: Scientific societies in Tasmania in the 1840's”, Isis, lx (1969), 198–209.

Kay to Lloyd, May 1842; Royal Society of London, Terrestrial Magnetism Correspondence, ii, no. 107.

Kay's service record ought to be preserved among the Admiralty records at the Public Record Office, London, but an extensive search has failed to find it. His diary from the Chanticleer voyage is held at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, while his service on Rainbow is noted by Markham A. H. , Life of Sir John Franklin (London, 1891), 179.

Kay J. H. , “Terrestrial magnetism”, Tasmanian journal of natural science, i (1842), 124–35; idem, “Description of the instruments employed in the magnetical observatory, Tasmania”, ibid., 207–24.

See the list of Kay's publications in Home R. W. , Physics i0n Australia to 1945: Bibliography and biographical register (Melbourne, 1990); also in Savours McConnell , op. cit. (ref. 16), 561–2.

Royal Society of London, Certificates, 1840–1860, f. 173; also Home R. W. , “A world-wide network of scientific patronage and reward: The ‘colonial’ fellowship of the Royal Society of London”, in Home R. W. Kohlstedt Sally Gregory (eds), International science and national scientific identity: Australia between Britain and America (Dordrecht, 1991), 151–79.

Sabine Edward , “On periodical laws discoverable in the mean effects of the larger magnetic disturbances”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, cxli (1851), 123–39 and cxlii (1852), 103–29; idem, “On what the colonial magnetic observatories have accomplished”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, viii (1856–7), 396–413; “Report of the joint committee of the Royal Society and the British Association, for procuring a continuance of the magnetic and meteorological observatories”, British Association for the Advancement of Science, report of the 28th meeting, Leeds 1858, 295–305.

Abbott Francis , Results of twenty-five years' meteorological observations for Hobart Town… (Hobart, 1866).

von Neumayer Georg , Auf zum Südpol (Berlin, 1901), p. XII.

Wiederkehr K. H. Schröder Wilfried , “Georg von Neumayers geophysikalisches Projekt in Australien und Alexander von Humboldt”, Gesnerus, xlvi (1989), 93–115. On Neumayer's Australian activities, see Home R. W. , “Georg Neumayer and the Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne”, in Walker David Tampke Jürgen (eds), From Berlin to the Burdekin: The German contribution to the development of Australian science, exploration and the arts (Sydney, 1991), 40–53.

Home R. W. Kretzer Hans-Jochen , “The Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne: New documents relating to its foundation”, Historical records of Australian science, viii (1991), 213–43.

Neumayer's enthusiasm for the Humboldtian approach to science was shared by another young German scientist who arrived in Melbourne in the 1850s, the botanist Ferdinand Mueller, who many years later still maintained that “the greatest triumph of sciences consists in bringing them into the fullest contact, somewhat in an Aristotelean and Plinian — Or speaking of our own epoch — In an Humboldtian spirit” ( Mueller , “Inaugural address”, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, report of the second meeting, Melbourne, 1890, 1–26, p. 5.

Neumayer G. , “On Dove's law of the turning of the wind, as illustrated and supported by observations made at the Flagstaff Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory, Melbourne”, Transactions of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, iv (1859), 102–15.

Neumayer G. to Chief Secretary, Victoria, 15 June 1857; Public Record Office, Victoria, VPRS 1189, Box 744, B57/4287, published as an appendix to Home Kretzer , op. cit. (ref. 28), 230.

Neumayer G. , Results of the magnetic survey of the colony of Victoria, executed during the years 1858–1864 (Mannheim, 1869), passim. The original journals are at the Deutches Hydrographisches Institut, Hamburg.

Maury Matthew Fontaine , Wind and current charts (Washington, 1848–).

von Neumayer G. , “Mein Prüfungsjahr”, published as an appendix to Kretzer Hans-Jochen , Windrose und Südpol: Leben und Werk der grossen Pfälzer Wissenschaftlers Georg von Neumayer (Bad Dürkheim, 1984), 53–75, p. 75.

Neumayer G. , Results of the meteorological observations … and of the nautical observations collected and discussed at the Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne, during the years 1858–1862 (Melbourne, 1864), 314–30, 339–43. Neumayer also published two other substantial volumes arising from his period in Melbourne, namely Results of the magnetical, nautical and meteorological observations made and collected at the Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne…, March, 1858, to February, 1859 (Melbourne, 1860) and Discussion of the meteorological and magnetical observations made at the Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne, during the years 1858–1862 (Mannheim, 1867).

Baracchi P. , “Magnetic work in Australia”, Terrestrial magnetism, i (1896), 191–6.

Basalla George , “The spread of Western science”, Science, clvi (1967), 611–22; MacLeod Roy , “On visiting the ‘moving metropolis’: Reflections on the architecture of imperial science”, Historical records of Australian science, v (1982), 1–16, reprinted in Reingold Rothenberg , op. cit. (ref. 12), 217–32.

Todd Charles , “Meteorological work in Australia: A review”, AAAS report, no. 5 (Adelaide, 1893), 246–70, p. 252.

Ibid.; also Ellery R. L. J. , “The present state of meteorology”, Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, xiv (1877), 10–19.

Friedman Robert M. , Appropriating the weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the construction of a modern meteorology (Ithaca, 1989).

Sviedrys Romualdas , “The rise of physics laboratories in Britain”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, vii (1976), 405–36; Cahan David , “The institutional revolution in German physics, 1865–1914”, ibid., xv (1985), 1–65; Phillips Melba , “Early history of physics laboratories for students at college level”, American journal of physics, xlix (1981), 522–7.

Cahan David , An institute for an empire: The Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, 1871–1918 (Cambridge, 1989); Pyatt Edward , The National Physical Laboratory: A history (Bristol, 1983); Kevles Daniel J. , The physicists: The history of a scientific community in modern America (New York, 1978), 66–67, 72–74.

Melbourne chose, however, in somewhat outmoded fashion, to call its chair “natural philosophy”, a name that was retained until 1944.

Home R. W. , “First physicist of Australia: Richard Threlfall at the University of Sydney, 1886–1898”, Historical records of Australian science, vi (1986), 333–57, p. 340.

Home R. W. , “The physical sciences: String, sealing wax and self-sufficiency”, in MacLeod Roy (ed.), The commonwealth of science: ANZAAS and the scientific enterprise in Australasia, 1888–1988 (Melbourne, 1988), 147–65.

“[Report of the gravity survey committee]”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, v (1892), 218–21, and vi (1893), 213–20; Love E. F. J. , “Observations with Kater's invariable pendulums made at Sydney during January and February, 1894”, ibid., vii (1894), 1–18; idem, “On the value of gravity at the Sydney Observatory”, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, xxviii (1894), 62–64.

Threlfall R. Pollock J. A. , “On a quartz-thread gravity balance”, Philosophical transactions, A, cxciii (1899), 215–58.

See Chapman's reports in AAAS report, no. 5 ( Adelaide , 1893), 277–9; no. 7 (Sydney, 1898), 241–4; and no. 9 (Hobart, 1902), 50–66, 67–68; and also Chapman R. W. Inglis A. , Australian tides (Adelaide, 1903).

Caroe G. M. , William Henry Bragg, 1862–1942: Man and scientist (Cambridge, 1978), 38.

Hogg E. G. , “The magnetic survey of Tasmania”, Papers and proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1900–01, 85–88; McAulay A. Hogg E. G. , “A preliminary magnetic survey of Tasmania, 1901”, AAAS report, no. 9 (Hobart, 1902), 81–94.

Pigot E. F. , “Note on the new Wiechert seismometers at Riverview College, Sydney”, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, xliii (1909), 388–93; Pigot E. F. Cotton L. A. , “Seismology in Australia”, Proceedings of the first pan-Pacific science conference, Hawaii, 1920, ii, 409–10.

Carnegie Institution of Washington, Yearbook, ii (1903), 203–12; Tuve Merle A. , “Review of magnetic survey and observatory program of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, 1904–1946”, ibid., xlvi (1946–47), 43–60, p. 43.

Kidson Edward , “The magnetic work during the transcontinental trip in Australia, May to September 1912”, in Bauer L.A. Fleming J.A. (eds), Land magnetic observations 1911–1913 and reports on special researches (Washington, 1915), 111–14; idem, “On the general magnetic survey of Australia, and on an expedition over the Canning Stock Route, Western Australia, 1914”, in Bauer L. A. (eds), Land magnetic observations, 1914–1920 (Washington, 1921), 164–72 (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication no. 175, vols ii, iv respectively).

Fleming J. A. , Magnetic results from Watheroo Observatory, Western Australia, 1919–1935 (Washington, 1947), 1–2; Home R. W. , “To Watheroo and back: The DTM in Australia, 1911–1947”, in Good Gregory A. (ed.), The Earth, the heavens and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (Washington, 1994), 149–60.

A list of all those who worked at Watheroo, 1919–35, is given in ibid., 71.

The first such conference was held in 1928. Others followed in 1929, 1931, 1933, 1936 and 1939. Roneoed sets of proceedings and abstracts of papers for most of these meetings are in the files of the Australian Institute of Physics, Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra.

Evans W. F. , History of the Radio Research Board, 1926–1945 (Melbourne, 1973), 104–5.

Ibid., passim.

Martyn D. F. Bailey V. A. , “Interaction of radio waves”, Nature, cxxxiii (1934), 218; idem, “The influence of electric waves on the ionosphere”, Philosophical magazine, ser. 7, xviii (1934), 369–86.

Stewart Balfour , “Terrestrial magnetism”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, vol. xvi (1883), 159–84, p. 182.

Schuster Arthur , “The diurnal variation of terrestrial magnetism”, Philosophical transactions, A, ccviii (1908), 163–204; Chapman Sydney , “On the diurnal variation of the Earth's magnetism produced by the Moon and the Sun”, ibid., ccxiii (1913), 279–331; idem, “The solar and lunar diurnal variation of the Earth's magnetism”, ibid., ccxviii (1919), 1–118.

Martyn D. F. , “Tidal phenomena in the ionosphere”, U.R.S.I. special report no. 2 (1950); Massey H. S. W. , “David Forbes Martyn”, Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Royal Society of London, xvii (1971), 497–510; Home R. W. , “Martyn, David Forbes”, Dictionary of scientific biography, xviii, 599–601.