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

本期博士学位论文改进基金为技术史研究提供资助。该项目的重点是1870年至1930年期间海洋技术作为科学仪器在海洋野外工作中的作用的变化。这项工作的中心主题是研究船在这一时期概念的变化，因为它经历了从作为仪器的船到作为实验室的船，最后在其最新化身中，作为在转变为可信的科学空间的海洋中工作的隐形技术员的船的变化。该计划是对来自美国、法国和英国的自然学家的海洋探险和科学通信进行比较研究。这笔赠款支持这三个国家不同地点的档案研究。智力价值大多数实地科学的历史都是研究陆地主题，而不是海洋主题。然而，田野这个抽象的概念？已被应用于海洋环境。虽然历史学家已经很好地确立了实验室作为科学工作空间的重要性，尽管最近关于野外科学史的学术研究越来越多，但船只、实验室和海洋学作为野外科学的发展之间的联系还没有得到充分的探索。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之中，从而为科学史作出贡献，将实验室和野外科学的发展历史和海洋环境探索的历史这两个分领域联系起来。更广泛的影响这项研究将揭示以物理和政治大系统为框架的全球科学出现所涉及的社会和文化过程。通过追踪海洋作为科学空间的发展，这项工作将展示植根于19世纪探险科学的“太平洋世界”的想法如何有助于在两次世界大战期间自觉地构建这一概念。关于太平洋世界的公开声明，以及以海洋科学为重点的博物馆展品的发展，以及对海洋考察结果的解释，表明了大众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.