Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Ocean Laboratory: Exploration, Fieldwork, and Science at Sea

本博士论文改进基金支持技术史方面的研究。该项目的重点是1870年至1930年期间海洋技术作为科学工具在海洋学实地调查中不断变化的作用。该作品的中心主题是这一时期研究船概念的变化，因为它经历了从作为仪器的船到作为实验室的船的变化，最后，在它最近的化身中，作为在海洋中操作的隐形技术人员的船转变为可信的科学空间。该计划是对来自美国、法国和英国的自然学家的海洋考察和科学通信进行比较研究。该基金支持这三个国家不同地点的档案研究。大多数野外科学的历史都是关于陆地的，而不是海洋的。然而，抽象的概念？场吗?已应用于海洋环境。虽然历史学家已经很好地确立了实验室作为科学工作场所的重要性，尽管最近有越来越多的关于实地科学史的学术研究，但船舶、实验室和海洋学作为一门实地科学的发展之间的联系还有待充分探索。追溯这段历史将有助于将海洋学的历史置于该领域更大的科学史中，从而为科学史提供一个桥梁两个子领域的贡献，实验室和现场科学的发展史以及海洋环境探索的历史。更广泛的影响这项研究将揭示涉及大规模系统框架的全球科学出现的社会和文化进程，包括物理和政治。通过追溯海洋作为科学空间的发展，本书将展示根植于19世纪远征科学的“太平洋世界”概念如何在两次世界大战之间的时期促成了这一概念的自觉地缘政治建构。关于太平洋世界的公开宣传，以及以海洋科学为重点的博物馆展览的发展，以及对海洋探险结果的解释，展示了流行文化和政治与海洋科学文化相互作用的方式。

IntroductionThis doctoral dissertation improvement grant supports research in history of technology. The project focuses on the changing role of maritime technology as scientific instruments in oceanographic fieldwork between 1870 and 1930. The central theme of the work is the changing conception of the research vessel over this period, as it underwent a change from the ship as instrument, to the ship as laboratory, and finally, in its most recent incarnation, to the ship as invisible technician operating within an ocean transformed into credible scientific space. The plan is to develop a comparative study of marine expeditions and scientific correspondence of naturalists from the United States, France, and Britain. The grant supports archival research at various locations in these three countries.Intellectual MeritMost histories of the field sciences treat terrestrial topics, rather than marine ones. However, the abstract notion of ?the field? has been applied to marine environments. While the importance of laboratories as a space for scientific work has been well established by historians, and though there has been a growing body of recent scholarship on the history of field science, the link between ships, laboratories, and the development of oceanography as a field science has yet to be fully explored. Tracing this history will serve to set the history of oceanography within the larger history of science in the field and thereby offer to the history of science a contribution that bridges two subfields, the history of the development of laboratory and field sciences and the history of the exploration of the marine environment. Broader ImpactThis study will sheds light on the social and cultural processes involved in the emergence of global sciences framed in terms of large-scale systems, both physical and political. By tracing the development of oceans as scientific spaces, this work will demonstrate how the idea of a "Pacific World," with roots in nineteenth-century expeditionary science, contributed to the self-conscious geopolitical construction of this concept in the interwar period. Public proclamations about the Pacific World, along with the development of museum exhibits focused on marine science and interpreting the results of oceanographic expeditions, demonstrate the ways in which popular culture and politics interacted with the cultures of marine science.