lissa roberts | University of Twente (original) (raw)
Books by lissa roberts
History of Science, 2020
We live in a science-saturated world that can only function fairly and productively if we find th... more We live in a science-saturated world that can only function fairly and productively if we find the right balance between oversight and trust. Small wonder, then, that research integrity and fraud are receiving so much attention. Government agencies, scientific organizations, university administrators and scientific publishers issue guidelines to monitor scientific conduct, as scandals continue to make headlines, and public faith is shaken. The time seems ripe for historians of science to examine these phenomena in a more concerted way, and to join the public discussion. Hence this special issue, which we hope will achieve two goals. First, we would like to reach an audience beyond historians of science, and hope that the insights drawn from examining relevant historical cases and subjecting the concepts of research integrity and fraud to historical inquiry will provide fresh insights regarding how best to encourage integrity and discourage misconduct. So too, are we convinced that critical attention to the history of research integrity and fraud can reveal new historical and methodological insights of broader import to historians of science. We, therefore, hope that more of our colleagues include the content of and approaches to this subject in their repertoire.
Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760-1840 offers a new view of the peri... more Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760-1840 offers a new view of the period during which Europe took on its modern character and globally dominant position. By exploring the intertwined realms of production, governance and materials, it places chemists and chemistry at the center of processes most closely identified with the construction of the modern world. This includes the interactive intensification of material and knowledge production; the growth and management of consumption; environmental changes, regulation of materials, markets, landscapes and societies; and practices embodied in political economy. Rather than emphasize revolutionary breaks and the primacy of innovation-driven change, the volume highlights the continuities and accumulation of incremental changes that framed historical development.
Ambix, 2006
... FL Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley: Office for ... more ... FL Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley: Office for the History of Science and Technology, 1989). Page 2. Published by Maney Publishing (c) Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 198 LISSA ROBERTS AND RINA KNOEFF ...
Focusing on the second half of the long eighteenth century, this special issue explores the conce... more Focusing on the second half of the long eighteenth century, this special issue explores the concepts and practices of accumulation and management in ways that work to de-center the history of science and empire. Particular attention is paid to four intertwined elements: 1) the networked location of centres of accumulation around the world; 2) (natural) knowledge as a tool, object and consequence of accumulation; 3) the complex interactions between management and governance; and 4] the geographically dispersed processes of ascribing value. Following an extended introduction, four essays examine accumulation and management in New Granada, the Dutch East Indies, the Isle de France (Mauritius) and the networks that connected France to the western portions of the Ottoman Empire.
The Netherlands housed a number of widely known, envied and emulated centres of accumulation duri... more The Netherlands housed a number of widely known, envied and emulated centres of accumulation during the early-modern period. Raw and manufactured goods passed through Dutch port cities, linking the country to global cycles of accumulation and exchange. Its institutions of learning and culture similarly served as internationally famous centres of accumulation that furthered knowledge and cultural production, embodied in the form of books, maps and prints, exhibits and the like. Centres and Cycles of Accumulation in and around the Netherlands brings histories of manufacture, commerce and global exchange together with histories of knowledge and cultural circulation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by anatomizing the multi-faceted concept of accumulation. Its essays explore the processes that led to the formation of concentrated, often hybrid, sites of material, intellectual and cultural accumulation in the Netherlands and its overseas stations, as well as the concerns and consequences to which the successes and challenges of accumulation gave rise.
Although manual labour and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, history teache... more Although manual labour and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, history teaches us that they are closely linked processes. The mindful hand explores innovative areas of European society between the late Renaissance and the period of early industrialisation where the enterprise of knowledge and production relied on the most intimate connexions of thought and toil. This volume explains how philosophers and labourers collaborated in an environment where artisans and instrument-makers, administrators and entrepreneurs simultaneously pioneered technical change alongside knowledge formation. The essays gathered here help show how these projects were pursued together, yet why, in retrospect, the very categories of science and technology emerged as seemingly distinct endeavors.
articles by lissa roberts
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, 2024
The study of work is flourishing in a corner of our discipline where few readers of Labor tread. ... more The study of work is flourishing in a corner of our discipline where few readers of Labor tread. In recent years, historians of science have begun to think about "science in action": that is, science as constituted by, and constituent of, work. Much of this work is situated in sites that aren't conventionally identified as "scientific" and carried out by actors who are not conventionally viewed as "scientists." Historians of science have turned their attention, for example, to the infrastructural labor that supports research, asking who carried the intrepid geologist's suitcases, washed the chemist's glassware, or watched the kids so that someone else could have an "aha" moment at the microscope. So too have they trained their focus on the scientific work done by distillers to develop product substitutions that evaded excise duties, by shipyard managers who introduced new standards to compartmentalize "mental" and "manual" labor, and by miners at Potosi who developed new ways to extract silver from ores. Historians of science have credited artisanal and agricultural laborers with investigative/ constructive practices and forms of knowledge about the natural world that are more typically remembered as belonging to famous scientists and their "discoveries." They have embedded Taylorist fantasies of workplace discipline in the broader evolution of the human sciences and created deep intellectual genealogies for the "scientific racism" that has historically structured who does a society's most backbreaking labor. 1 Historians of science have done all these things quite effectively, albeit with only the loosest engagement with the prevailing scholarship in the field of labor history. Citations to Labor, International Labor and Working-Class History, and Labour/ Le Travail are few and far between on the pages of Isis, History of Science, and other
History of Science, 2023
This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it m... more This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The article ends by projecting into the future, considering how a labor history of science might help us grapple with connecting our understanding of the past with the challenges of today and tomorrow.
History of Science, 2020
A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought t... more A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought the issue of scientific misconduct in India to the fore. The debate has framed scientific misconduct in India as a recent phenomenon. This article questions that framing, which rests on the current tendency to define and police scientific misconduct as a matter of individual behavior. Without ignoring the role of individuals, this article contextualizes their actions by calling attention to the conduct of the institutions, as well as social and political structures that are historically responsible for governing the practice of science in India since the colonial period. Scientific (mis)conduct, in other words, is here examined as a historical phenomenon borne of the interaction between individuals' aspirations and the systems that impose, measure, and reward scientific output in particular ways. Importantly, historicizing scientific misconduct in this way also underscores scientist-driven initiatives and regulatory interventions that have placed India at the leading edge of reform. With the formal establishment of the Society for Scientific Values in 1986, Indian scientists became the first national community worldwide to monitor research integrity in an institutionally organized way.
This introductory essay frames our special issue by discussing how attention to the history of re... more This introductory essay frames our special issue by discussing how attention to the history of research integrity and fraud can stimulate new historical and methodological insights of broader import to historians of science.
History of Science, 2020
This introductory article frames our special issue in terms of how historicizing research integri... more This introductory article frames our special issue in terms of how historicizing research integrity and fraud can benefit current discussions of scientific conduct and the need to improve public trust in science.
As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive rela... more As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive relationships with the history of science, technology, and medicine are recognized and being investigated as significant areas of concern. Strangely, despite the fact that it is key to understanding so many of the subjects that are central to global history and would itself benefit from a broader geographical perspective, the history of chemistry has largely been left out of this process – particularly for the modern historical period. This article argues for the value of integrating the history of chemistry with global history, not only for understanding the past, but also for thinking about our shared present and future. Toward this end, it (1) explores the various ways in which 'chemistry' has and can be defined, with special attention to discussions of 'indigenous knowledge systems'; (2) examines the benefits of organizing historical inquiry around the evolving sociomaterial identities of substances; (3) considers ways in which the concepts of 'chemical governance' and 'chemical expertise' can be expanded to match the complexities of global history, especially in relation to environmental issues, climate change, and pollution; and (4) seeks to sketch the various geographies entailed in bringing the history of chemistry together with global histories. Historians of science, technology, and medicine have embraced global history. 1 Publications, workshops, and conferences too numerous to cite demonstrate our
In response to increasing academic interest, Cambridge University Press launched a new journal in... more In response to increasing academic interest, Cambridge University Press launched a new journal in 2006, entitled the Journal of Global History. To inaugurate the endeavour, the editors asked economic historian Patrick O'Brien to write an introductory essay to serve as a prolegomenon for this newly invigorated field of study. O'Brien began by noting that it is no mere coincidence that interest in global history should be growing, given the global challenges entailed in current-day economic , political and environmental issues. From this perspective, we might take " global history " to refer both to the field's geographical reach and its attempts to relate a global range of seemingly diverse phenomena. Both understandings require us to stretch beyond the narrow specialisms in which we were trained and invite increasing willingness to collaborate. Along these lines, O'Brien applauded those historians who have reached outside their own discipline to draw on the insights and methods of the natural sciences, as well as natural scientists whose work is shedding new light on historical development. In his words: …renewed concern with the evolution of human interactions with nature attracts biologists, geologists, botanists, climatologists, palaeontologists and epidemiologists into history. Their deeper comprehension and, latterly, the modern modes they have adopted for the lucid communication of scientific knowledge pertaining to these all-important connexions, are being fed back into history...Science recognises no borders and has always striven for universal understanding. That is why the integration of its empirically validated theories and insights into long-neglected connexions between human and natural histories has become widely accepted as a necessary basis for comparative history on global and more local scales. 1 We might see O'Brien's call at least partially as the continuation of a tradition set out by the second generation Annales historian Fernand Braudel, who built his magisterial study of the Mediterranean world on a recognition of the long-term importance of climatalogical, geographical and demographical factors. 2 But for all the insights that might be gained by mining the evidential fields of natural scientific inquiry, one cannot help but be struck by the essentially ahistorical character of
This article is part of a special issue on "Humans and the Environment." In it we trace the tran... more This article is part of a special issue on "Humans and the Environment." In it we trace the transnational landscape of practices involving the extraction, refining, reuse, and valuation of salts, centered in the Netherlands in the period 1750–1850. It examines how industry, agriculture, and chemistry developed together with commercial and governance relations through these practices. While chemical governance first took up socio-material environments and nonhumans as integrated components in fostering welfare, in time it helped fragment the landscape of salt-related practices into distinct productive and administrative realms, implicating a bifurcation between “nature” and “society.” Thereby, the essay contributes to our understanding of how and when humans came to define their own actions as standing apart from an external “nature”—relevant for broader discussions of environmental history and as a compelling analytical perspective from which to view current discussions of the Anthropocene.
Charles Coulston Gillispie’s “The Discovery of the Leblanc Process” and “The Natural History of I... more Charles Coulston Gillispie’s “The Discovery of the Leblanc Process” and “The Natural History of Industry” (Isis 48 (1957): 152–70, 398–407) were unique, yet characteristic of their era. Together, they engaged with discussions of the historical relationship between science and industry. While influential contemporaries favored a narrative structured by Anglo-centrism and the linear model, Gillispie turned to France and offered a different view. Similar to sociologist Robert Merton, Gillispie argued that French Enlightenment scientists (and scientists generally) served society and the state as educators and managers in exchange for support for their essentially disinterested pursuit of scientific knowledge. Organizing useful knowledge to inspire material and intellectual progress through teaching and encyclopedic publications was therefore part of their brief. Gillispie developed this view further in the 1980s, arguing against those who would grant agency to non-humans as well as human actors. His work is thus of continuing interest for current debates.
History of Science, 2020
We live in a science-saturated world that can only function fairly and productively if we find th... more We live in a science-saturated world that can only function fairly and productively if we find the right balance between oversight and trust. Small wonder, then, that research integrity and fraud are receiving so much attention. Government agencies, scientific organizations, university administrators and scientific publishers issue guidelines to monitor scientific conduct, as scandals continue to make headlines, and public faith is shaken. The time seems ripe for historians of science to examine these phenomena in a more concerted way, and to join the public discussion. Hence this special issue, which we hope will achieve two goals. First, we would like to reach an audience beyond historians of science, and hope that the insights drawn from examining relevant historical cases and subjecting the concepts of research integrity and fraud to historical inquiry will provide fresh insights regarding how best to encourage integrity and discourage misconduct. So too, are we convinced that critical attention to the history of research integrity and fraud can reveal new historical and methodological insights of broader import to historians of science. We, therefore, hope that more of our colleagues include the content of and approaches to this subject in their repertoire.
Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760-1840 offers a new view of the peri... more Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760-1840 offers a new view of the period during which Europe took on its modern character and globally dominant position. By exploring the intertwined realms of production, governance and materials, it places chemists and chemistry at the center of processes most closely identified with the construction of the modern world. This includes the interactive intensification of material and knowledge production; the growth and management of consumption; environmental changes, regulation of materials, markets, landscapes and societies; and practices embodied in political economy. Rather than emphasize revolutionary breaks and the primacy of innovation-driven change, the volume highlights the continuities and accumulation of incremental changes that framed historical development.
Ambix, 2006
... FL Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley: Office for ... more ... FL Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley: Office for the History of Science and Technology, 1989). Page 2. Published by Maney Publishing (c) Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 198 LISSA ROBERTS AND RINA KNOEFF ...
Focusing on the second half of the long eighteenth century, this special issue explores the conce... more Focusing on the second half of the long eighteenth century, this special issue explores the concepts and practices of accumulation and management in ways that work to de-center the history of science and empire. Particular attention is paid to four intertwined elements: 1) the networked location of centres of accumulation around the world; 2) (natural) knowledge as a tool, object and consequence of accumulation; 3) the complex interactions between management and governance; and 4] the geographically dispersed processes of ascribing value. Following an extended introduction, four essays examine accumulation and management in New Granada, the Dutch East Indies, the Isle de France (Mauritius) and the networks that connected France to the western portions of the Ottoman Empire.
The Netherlands housed a number of widely known, envied and emulated centres of accumulation duri... more The Netherlands housed a number of widely known, envied and emulated centres of accumulation during the early-modern period. Raw and manufactured goods passed through Dutch port cities, linking the country to global cycles of accumulation and exchange. Its institutions of learning and culture similarly served as internationally famous centres of accumulation that furthered knowledge and cultural production, embodied in the form of books, maps and prints, exhibits and the like. Centres and Cycles of Accumulation in and around the Netherlands brings histories of manufacture, commerce and global exchange together with histories of knowledge and cultural circulation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by anatomizing the multi-faceted concept of accumulation. Its essays explore the processes that led to the formation of concentrated, often hybrid, sites of material, intellectual and cultural accumulation in the Netherlands and its overseas stations, as well as the concerns and consequences to which the successes and challenges of accumulation gave rise.
Although manual labour and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, history teache... more Although manual labour and theoretical invention might now seem separate ventures, history teaches us that they are closely linked processes. The mindful hand explores innovative areas of European society between the late Renaissance and the period of early industrialisation where the enterprise of knowledge and production relied on the most intimate connexions of thought and toil. This volume explains how philosophers and labourers collaborated in an environment where artisans and instrument-makers, administrators and entrepreneurs simultaneously pioneered technical change alongside knowledge formation. The essays gathered here help show how these projects were pursued together, yet why, in retrospect, the very categories of science and technology emerged as seemingly distinct endeavors.
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, 2024
The study of work is flourishing in a corner of our discipline where few readers of Labor tread. ... more The study of work is flourishing in a corner of our discipline where few readers of Labor tread. In recent years, historians of science have begun to think about "science in action": that is, science as constituted by, and constituent of, work. Much of this work is situated in sites that aren't conventionally identified as "scientific" and carried out by actors who are not conventionally viewed as "scientists." Historians of science have turned their attention, for example, to the infrastructural labor that supports research, asking who carried the intrepid geologist's suitcases, washed the chemist's glassware, or watched the kids so that someone else could have an "aha" moment at the microscope. So too have they trained their focus on the scientific work done by distillers to develop product substitutions that evaded excise duties, by shipyard managers who introduced new standards to compartmentalize "mental" and "manual" labor, and by miners at Potosi who developed new ways to extract silver from ores. Historians of science have credited artisanal and agricultural laborers with investigative/ constructive practices and forms of knowledge about the natural world that are more typically remembered as belonging to famous scientists and their "discoveries." They have embedded Taylorist fantasies of workplace discipline in the broader evolution of the human sciences and created deep intellectual genealogies for the "scientific racism" that has historically structured who does a society's most backbreaking labor. 1 Historians of science have done all these things quite effectively, albeit with only the loosest engagement with the prevailing scholarship in the field of labor history. Citations to Labor, International Labor and Working-Class History, and Labour/ Le Travail are few and far between on the pages of Isis, History of Science, and other
History of Science, 2023
This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it m... more This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The article ends by projecting into the future, considering how a labor history of science might help us grapple with connecting our understanding of the past with the challenges of today and tomorrow.
History of Science, 2020
A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought t... more A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought the issue of scientific misconduct in India to the fore. The debate has framed scientific misconduct in India as a recent phenomenon. This article questions that framing, which rests on the current tendency to define and police scientific misconduct as a matter of individual behavior. Without ignoring the role of individuals, this article contextualizes their actions by calling attention to the conduct of the institutions, as well as social and political structures that are historically responsible for governing the practice of science in India since the colonial period. Scientific (mis)conduct, in other words, is here examined as a historical phenomenon borne of the interaction between individuals' aspirations and the systems that impose, measure, and reward scientific output in particular ways. Importantly, historicizing scientific misconduct in this way also underscores scientist-driven initiatives and regulatory interventions that have placed India at the leading edge of reform. With the formal establishment of the Society for Scientific Values in 1986, Indian scientists became the first national community worldwide to monitor research integrity in an institutionally organized way.
This introductory essay frames our special issue by discussing how attention to the history of re... more This introductory essay frames our special issue by discussing how attention to the history of research integrity and fraud can stimulate new historical and methodological insights of broader import to historians of science.
History of Science, 2020
This introductory article frames our special issue in terms of how historicizing research integri... more This introductory article frames our special issue in terms of how historicizing research integrity and fraud can benefit current discussions of scientific conduct and the need to improve public trust in science.
As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive rela... more As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive relationships with the history of science, technology, and medicine are recognized and being investigated as significant areas of concern. Strangely, despite the fact that it is key to understanding so many of the subjects that are central to global history and would itself benefit from a broader geographical perspective, the history of chemistry has largely been left out of this process – particularly for the modern historical period. This article argues for the value of integrating the history of chemistry with global history, not only for understanding the past, but also for thinking about our shared present and future. Toward this end, it (1) explores the various ways in which 'chemistry' has and can be defined, with special attention to discussions of 'indigenous knowledge systems'; (2) examines the benefits of organizing historical inquiry around the evolving sociomaterial identities of substances; (3) considers ways in which the concepts of 'chemical governance' and 'chemical expertise' can be expanded to match the complexities of global history, especially in relation to environmental issues, climate change, and pollution; and (4) seeks to sketch the various geographies entailed in bringing the history of chemistry together with global histories. Historians of science, technology, and medicine have embraced global history. 1 Publications, workshops, and conferences too numerous to cite demonstrate our
In response to increasing academic interest, Cambridge University Press launched a new journal in... more In response to increasing academic interest, Cambridge University Press launched a new journal in 2006, entitled the Journal of Global History. To inaugurate the endeavour, the editors asked economic historian Patrick O'Brien to write an introductory essay to serve as a prolegomenon for this newly invigorated field of study. O'Brien began by noting that it is no mere coincidence that interest in global history should be growing, given the global challenges entailed in current-day economic , political and environmental issues. From this perspective, we might take " global history " to refer both to the field's geographical reach and its attempts to relate a global range of seemingly diverse phenomena. Both understandings require us to stretch beyond the narrow specialisms in which we were trained and invite increasing willingness to collaborate. Along these lines, O'Brien applauded those historians who have reached outside their own discipline to draw on the insights and methods of the natural sciences, as well as natural scientists whose work is shedding new light on historical development. In his words: …renewed concern with the evolution of human interactions with nature attracts biologists, geologists, botanists, climatologists, palaeontologists and epidemiologists into history. Their deeper comprehension and, latterly, the modern modes they have adopted for the lucid communication of scientific knowledge pertaining to these all-important connexions, are being fed back into history...Science recognises no borders and has always striven for universal understanding. That is why the integration of its empirically validated theories and insights into long-neglected connexions between human and natural histories has become widely accepted as a necessary basis for comparative history on global and more local scales. 1 We might see O'Brien's call at least partially as the continuation of a tradition set out by the second generation Annales historian Fernand Braudel, who built his magisterial study of the Mediterranean world on a recognition of the long-term importance of climatalogical, geographical and demographical factors. 2 But for all the insights that might be gained by mining the evidential fields of natural scientific inquiry, one cannot help but be struck by the essentially ahistorical character of
This article is part of a special issue on "Humans and the Environment." In it we trace the tran... more This article is part of a special issue on "Humans and the Environment." In it we trace the transnational landscape of practices involving the extraction, refining, reuse, and valuation of salts, centered in the Netherlands in the period 1750–1850. It examines how industry, agriculture, and chemistry developed together with commercial and governance relations through these practices. While chemical governance first took up socio-material environments and nonhumans as integrated components in fostering welfare, in time it helped fragment the landscape of salt-related practices into distinct productive and administrative realms, implicating a bifurcation between “nature” and “society.” Thereby, the essay contributes to our understanding of how and when humans came to define their own actions as standing apart from an external “nature”—relevant for broader discussions of environmental history and as a compelling analytical perspective from which to view current discussions of the Anthropocene.
Charles Coulston Gillispie’s “The Discovery of the Leblanc Process” and “The Natural History of I... more Charles Coulston Gillispie’s “The Discovery of the Leblanc Process” and “The Natural History of Industry” (Isis 48 (1957): 152–70, 398–407) were unique, yet characteristic of their era. Together, they engaged with discussions of the historical relationship between science and industry. While influential contemporaries favored a narrative structured by Anglo-centrism and the linear model, Gillispie turned to France and offered a different view. Similar to sociologist Robert Merton, Gillispie argued that French Enlightenment scientists (and scientists generally) served society and the state as educators and managers in exchange for support for their essentially disinterested pursuit of scientific knowledge. Organizing useful knowledge to inspire material and intellectual progress through teaching and encyclopedic publications was therefore part of their brief. Gillispie developed this view further in the 1980s, arguing against those who would grant agency to non-humans as well as human actors. His work is thus of continuing interest for current debates.
Science in Context, 1993
This paper charts eighteenth-century chemistry's transition from its definition as an art to its ... more This paper charts eighteenth-century chemistry's transition from its definition as an art to its proclaimed status as a science. Both the general concept of art and specific practices of eighteenth-century chemists are explored to account for this transition. As a disciplined activity, art orients ...
Technology and Culture, 2004
Ambix, 2006
This paper charts the apothecary Petrus Johannes Kasteleyn's attempts to stimulate greater i... more This paper charts the apothecary Petrus Johannes Kasteleyn's attempts to stimulate greater interest in chemistry among the Dutch at the end of the eighteenth century. Well informed, especially about German developments in chemistry and the broader oeconomic reforms with ...
Science & Education, 2012
One of the two most extensive instrument collections in the Netherlands during the second half of... more One of the two most extensive instrument collections in the Netherlands during the second half of the eighteenth century-rivaling the much better known collection at the University of Leiden-belonged to an orphanage in The Hague that was specially established to mold hand-picked orphans into productive citizens. (The other was housed at the Mennonite Seminary in Amsterdam, for use in the education of its students.) The educational program at this orphanage, one of three established by the Fundatie van Renswoude, grew out of a marriage between the socially-oriented generosity of the wealthy Baroness van Renswoude and the pedagogical vision of the institute's director and head teacher-a vision that fit with the larger movement of oeconomic patriotism. Oeconomic patriotism, similar to 'improvement' and oeconomic movements in other European countries and their colonies, sought to tie the investigation of nature to an improvement of society's material and moral well-being. Indeed, it was argued that these two facets of society should be viewed as inseparable from each other, distinguishing the movement from more modern conceptions of economics. While a number of the key figures in this Dutch movement also became prominent Patriots during the revolutionary period at the end of the century, fighting against the House of Orange, they did not have a monopoly on oeconomic ideas of societal improvement. This is demonstrated by the fact that an explicitly pro-Orangist society, Mathesis Scientiarum Genitrix, was organized in 1785 to teach science and mathematics to poor boys and orphans for very similar reasons: to turn them into productive and useful citizens. As was the case with the Fundatie van Renswoude, a collection of instruments was assembled to help make this possible. This story is of interest because it discusses a hitherto under-examined use to which science education was put during this period, by revealing the link between such programs and the highly charged question of citizenry.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1995
Science & Education, 2006
This essay details a public display of four steam engine models assembled in a Leiden orphanage c... more This essay details a public display of four steam engine models assembled in a Leiden orphanage courtyard in 1777. By examining the multiple purposes to which these engines were and could be put, alongside the various interests, goals and interpretations of their inventors, instructors and audience, the notion of a clear division between public and private as well as scientific research and popularization is questioned. In its place, the essay ends with a generalized image of modern science, its practitioners, users and audiences seen as a complex terrain in which relations and divisions are constantly asserted, contested and renegotiated.
Visual culture is a 'hot' topic, attention to which has helped us deepen our understanding of the... more Visual culture is a 'hot' topic, attention to which has helped us deepen our understanding of the inter-related histories of art and science during the Tokugawa period. One need only think of Timon Screech, The lens within the heart (2002) and, more recently, Maki Fukuoka, The premise of fidelity (2012) to see this. But drawing attention to the visual comes at a price; it tends to draw our attention away from the role played by the other human senses, diminishing our understanding of the historically formative part they have played in the realms of art and science. This presentation will explore how emphasis on the visual has affected the way historians have presented the investigation of nature and its representation during the eighteenth century. It will also examine how this history might be altered by attention to the full range of sensuous practices that the investigation of nature and its representation actually involved.
From the labor in laboratory to the science in scientific management, the histories of labor and ... more From the labor in laboratory to the science in scientific management, the histories of labor and science are marked by intimate connections—many of which still await reflection and historical analysis. To provide a forum for productive conversation between labor historians and historians of science and to help address the pressing scholarly and political questions they share, the Science History Institute’s 2022 Gordon Cain Conference will explore the entanglements of science and labor as they have emerged around the globe between the 16th century and today.
We announce a conference at the Office for the History of Science, Uppsala University to take pla... more We announce a conference at the Office for the History of Science, Uppsala University to take place April 12-14, 2018 on the topic of " Making It Up: Histories of Research Integrity and Fraud in Scientific Practice. " We call for papers that explore the history of research integrity and fraud, including the question of how the meaning and consequences of these terms have changed over time and the quotidian work involved in the construction of 'clean' experimental data and identifiable artifacts. One or more special issues are planned for publishable versions of accepted contributions. Since at least the publication of works such as Leviathan and the Air Pump, historians have demonstrated their sensitivity to the fact that categories such as 'integrity', 'fraud' and 'misconduct' are not natural. Rather they reflect historically situated consensus regarding what constitutes-at least the appearance of-acceptable conduct in the pursuit of research and modes of reporting. Some of the most iconic controversies in the history of science have centered on the question of acceptable scientific conduct. An examination of research integrity and fraud opens up to nothing less than the history of science's moral economy: How have its institutional landscape and constraints on individual practitioners changed over time? What sorts of concrete work has this led to in the daily pursuit of 'clean' experimental data, identifiable artifacts, etc.? The 21 st century has seen a rash of high-profile cases of scientists fabricating or misrepresenting results in fields from biotechnology to social psychology. These incidents have spawned a cottage industry of metastudies claiming a " replication crisis. " Politicians, government agencies, and national academies have invoked allegations of fraud in – sometimes disingenuously – questioning scientists' expertise and calling for greater transparency in science. Yet the same actors seem reluctant to address structural conditions that encourage fraud: competition for scarce research funding, more demanding criteria for tenure and promotion, corporate partners who demand results that can be monetized. Historians of science and scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have a unique perspective on research integrity and fraud. Constructivist studies show that scientific practice is more ambiguous and complex than today's fraud hunters admit. Yet the constructivist toolkit is ill-equipped to deal with outright fraud. Hence, popular histories outnumber academic studies of science's con artists. Historians and STS scholars have also specialized so much in micro-studies that they have been slow to appreciate how systemic
We announce a conference at the Office for the History of Science, Uppsala University to take pla... more We announce a conference at the Office for the History of Science, Uppsala University to take place April 12-14, 2018 on the topic of " Making It Up: Histories of Research Integrity and Fraud in Scientific Practice. " We call for papers that explore the history of research integrity and fraud, including the question of how the meaning and consequences of these terms have changed over time and the quotidian work involved in the construction of 'clean' experimental data and identifiable artifacts. One or more special issues are planned for publishable versions of accepted contributions. Since at least the publication of works such as Leviathan and the Air Pump, historians have demonstrated their sensitivity to the fact that categories such as 'integrity', 'fraud' and 'misconduct' are not natural. Rather they reflect historically situated consensus regarding what constitutes-at least the appearance of-acceptable conduct in the pursuit of research and modes of reporting. Some of the most iconic controversies in the history of science have centered on the question of acceptable scientific conduct. An examination of research integrity and fraud opens up to nothing less than the history of science's moral economy: How has its institutional landscape and constraints on individual practitioners changed over time? What sorts of concrete work has this led to in the daily pursuit of 'clean' experimental data, identifiable artifacts, etc.? The 21 st century has seen a rash of high-profile cases of scientists fabricating or misrepresenting results in fields from biotechnology to social psychology. These incidents have spawned a cottage industry of metastudies claiming a " replication crisis. " Politicians, government agencies, and national academies have invoked allegations of fraud in – sometimes disingenuously – questioning scientists' expertise and calling for greater transparency in science. Yet the same actors seem reluctant to address structural conditions that encourage fraud: competition for scarce research funding, more demanding criteria for tenure and promotion, corporate partners who demand results that can be monetized. Historians of science and scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have a unique perspective on research integrity and fraud. Constructivist studies show that scientific practice is more ambiguous and complex than today's fraud hunters admit. Yet the constructivist toolkit is ill-equipped to deal with outright fraud. Hence, popular histories outnumber academic studies of science's con artists. Historians and STS scholars have also specialized so much in micro-studies that they have been slow to appreciate how systemic
This is the programme of the 2014 Chemical Heritage Foundation Cain Conference, with schedule and... more This is the programme of the 2014 Chemical Heritage Foundation Cain Conference, with schedule and presentation abstracts.
European University Institute, 26-27 September 2014 This is the second workshop in a series that... more European University Institute, 26-27 September 2014
This is the second workshop in a series that forms part of an international collaboration dedicated to revising our understanding of the history of chemistry during the crucial period 1760-1840. How was chemistry - a set of dynamically evolving practices and knowledge - interactively involved in ongoing industrial developments across and beyond Europe during an age often labeled 'the industrial revolution'? How did chemistry and chemists interact with developments in the complex realm of governance during a period that felt the deep impacts of revolution and reform? What can be gained by investigating materials as multi-faceted actors whose active presence was part of this unfolding history?
Paola Bertucci and Giuliano Pancaldi, eds., ELECTRIC BODIES: Episodes in the History of Medical Electricity, 2001
This essay uses the history of amber as the etymological root and investigative starting point fo... more This essay uses the history of amber as the etymological root and investigative starting point for the study of electricity to help make sense of the transition between the Renaissance tradition of focusing on the action of virtues that inhered in specific substances to early-modern experimental physics. By the eighteenth century, static electrical experimentation addressed its subject in two overlapping ways: as a subtle fluid and as a set of phenomena that could be produced, manipulated and applied to other investigative or practical purposes. While many disagreed about the identity and nature of electricity, it was universally accepted that the study and application of static electricity were tied to the investigative protocols of experimental physics. Similar to discussions of 'boundary objects' and 'trading zones', this essay indicates how co-operation could exist in a world of heterogeneous users, conceptions and applications.
Metascience
Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes f... more Over the past fifty years, the chemical revolution has been one of the most attractive episodes for historians and philosophers of science to forge their own vision of scientific change or to test philosophical hypotheses. The Lavoisier industry reached a peak between 1989 and 1994 in the context of the celebration of the bicentennial of Lavoisier's execution during the French Revolution. A review of the abundant literature about the chemical revolution by a respected and well-known scholar of eighteenth-century chemistry is therefore most welcome. Although it is not the first historiographical review of this event, John McEvoy's essay distinguishes itself by its level of generality. Rather than just surveying the different attempts at determining the meaning and significance of the chemical revolution, McEvoy adopts a meta-historical perspective that allows him to subsume the various interpretations of the chemical revolution under the broader general trends in the
Technology and Culture, 2006
... which it takes place. LISSA ROBERTS Lissa Roberts is associate professor of the history of sc... more ... which it takes place. LISSA ROBERTS Lissa Roberts is associate professor of the history of science and technology at the Center for Studies of Science, Technology and Society, University of Twente. Her interests include eigh ...
A Cultural History of the Sense in the Age of Enlightenment, 2016
This essay makes visible the senses’ role in Enlightenment science and philosophical discussions ... more This essay makes visible the senses’ role in Enlightenment science
and philosophical discussions of its practices.To do so, it
focuses on mathematics and the“quantifying spirit” of the 18th century, natural history and what Andrew Ure called the “philosophy of
manufactures.”
in Simon Schaffer, Lissa Roberts, Kapil Raj & James Delbourgo, eds., *The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820* (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications), pp. ix-xxxviii, 2009
Introduction
HISTORY OF SCIENCE has a longstanding reputation as the most innovative journal in its field. Goi... more HISTORY OF SCIENCE has a longstanding reputation as the most innovative journal in its field. Going back at least to the editorship of Roy Porter, it has welcomed new approaches and historiographical discussion related the history of science, technology and medicine. As current editor in chief, I invite you all to submit your essay manuscripts and proposals for special issues, roundtable discussions, and any other format that you think might further reflection and understanding in our field.
Book of abstracts, Digital Humanities Conference Krakow, 2016
This paper presents initial findings of the research project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwrit... more This paper presents initial findings of the research project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives and demonstrates the recognition capabilities of the MONK artificial intelligence system developed at the institute of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering (ALICE) at Groningen University. In a period of four years (2016-2019), our research project aims to produce an innovative and user-friendly tool, that combines both image and textual recognition, and allows an integrated study of fragmented historical heritage collections. Next to a short demonstration of MONK, we use this paper to outline how handwriting and image recognition helps to enrich the value of illustrated handwritten collections by adding information now inaccessible and disconnected. By doing so it advances the state of the art in automated extraction, classification, and networking of knowledge from heterogeneous manuscript collections and archives.
This is a draft of the introduction to a special section on "Chemistry and Global Histories Since... more This is a draft of the introduction to a special section on "Chemistry and Global Histories Since 1850" that will be published in the journal HISTORY OF SCIENCE.
As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive relationship with the history of science, technology and medicine are recognized and being investigated as significant areas of concern. Strangely, despite the fact that it is key to understanding so many of the subjects that are central to global history and would itself benefit from a broader geographical perspective, the history of chemistry has largely been left out of this process-particularly for the modern historical period. This article argues for the value of integrating the history of chemistry with global history, not only for understanding the past, but also for thinking about our shared present and future. Toward this end, it [1] explores the various ways in which 'chemistry' has and can be defined, with special attention to discussions of 'indigenous knowledge systems'; [2] examines the benefits of organizing historical inquiry around the evolving identities of material substances; [3] considers ways in which the concepts of 'chemical governance' and 'chemical expertise' can be expanded to match the complexities of global history, especially in relation to environmental issues, climate change and pollution; [4] seeks to sketch the various geographies entailed in bringing the history of chemistry together with global histories.
The new series Cultural Dynamics of Science (CDS) at Brill aims to contribute to ongoing efforts ... more The new series Cultural Dynamics of Science (CDS) at Brill aims to contribute to ongoing efforts in the history of science to understand the relations between the production, communication, consumption and use of knowledge without having recourse to the traditional equation of popularization with notions such as 'diffusion' and 'simplification'. The same goes for the distinctions they imply between expert knowledge and practices, on one side, and lay communities and understanding on the other. Focused on the period from the Enlightenment to the present, CDS intends instead to consider the various ways in which tensions and exchanges among the different actors involved have historically fed the productive circulation of knowledge. Sensitivity to specific contexts, epistemologies, spaces and networks, in which material production merges with knowledge production, is therefore paramount. CDS also aims to contribute to recent efforts in the history of science to move across fields traditionally studied by different scholarly disciplines, and to evolve into more inclusive, interdisciplinary cultural studies. It is further committed to a geographically expansive scope of coverage, focusing on the transnational and transcultural character of the scientific endeavour. While the series aims foremost at the publication of well-written scholarly monographs, carefully integrated collections of essays will also be welcome.
The American Historical Review, 2007
History of Science, 2020
A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought t... more A flurry of discussions about plagiarism and predatory publications in recent times has brought the issue of scientific misconduct in India to the fore. The debate has framed scientific misconduct in India as a recent phenomenon. This article questions that framing, which rests on the current tendency to define and police scientific misconduct as a matter of individual behavior. Without ignoring the role of individuals, this article contextualizes their actions by calling attention to the conduct of the institutions, as well as social and political structures that are historically responsible for governing the practice of science in India since the colonial period. Scientific (mis)conduct, in other words, is here examined as a historical phenomenon borne of the interaction between individuals’ aspirations and the systems that impose, measure, and reward scientific output in particular ways. Importantly, historicizing scientific misconduct in this way also underscores scientist-driven initiatives and regulatory interventions that have placed India at the leading edge of reform. With the formal establishment of the Society for Scientific Values in 1986, Indian scientists became the first national community worldwide to monitor research integrity in an institutionally organized way.