- Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
Simon Werrett
University College London, Science and Technology Studies, Faculty Member
- History, History of Science, History of Science and Technology, History of Technology, Russian History, Art and Science, and 14 moreEarly Modern History, British History, Science, Technology and Society, Eighteenth Century History, Environmental Studies, Environmental Sustainability, Imperial Russia, Technology And Culture, Theatre Studies, Philosophy of Science, Science and Technology Studies, Computer Networks, Databases, and Softwareedit
- Simon Werrett is the author of THRIFTY SCIENCE: MAKING THE MOST OF MATERIALS IN THE HISTORY OF EXPERIMENT (Chicago: U... moreSimon Werrett is the author of THRIFTY SCIENCE: MAKING THE MOST OF MATERIALS IN THE HISTORY OF EXPERIMENT (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). He teaches the history and philosophy of science at University College London. Previously he was Associate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His first book, on the history of fireworks, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010. He is currently researching projects on the history of plastics in science and medicine.edit
How does science move between cultures? This thesis explores the introduction of science into Russia in the eighteenth century through the history of the first decades of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. I show how the... more
How does science move between cultures? This thesis explores the introduction of science into Russia in the eighteenth century through the history of the first decades of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. I show how the academy succeeded to the degree that it was able to establish secure patronage from the Russian court and government, which demanded the cultivation of a continually changing repertoire of skills appealing to these institutions. Through a grand cabinet of curiosities, artisanal projects, scientific and pyrotechnic spectacles, and deft administration, the academy became an enduring element in Russian scientific culture. In the process, Russia developed an influential vision of Enlightenment that would feed back into the enlightened institutions of western Europe.
Topics included:
*Reading the foundation of St. Petersburg through Foucault
*Science and Spectacle
*Cabinets of Curiosities
*Public Science
*Fireworks
*Museums
*Court patronage
*Russian Icons and Chemistry
*Art and Science
*Russian Enlightenment
Topics included:
*Reading the foundation of St. Petersburg through Foucault
*Science and Spectacle
*Cabinets of Curiosities
*Public Science
*Fireworks
*Museums
*Court patronage
*Russian Icons and Chemistry
*Art and Science
*Russian Enlightenment
Research Interests: History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Intellectual History, Cultural History, and 20 moreCultural Studies, Russian Studies, Philosophy of Science, Early Modern History, History of Science, Eighteenth Century History, Enlightenment, Art and Science, Science, Technology and Society, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Michel Foucault, Global History, Russian History, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Early Modern Science, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Cabinets of Curiosities, History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Kunstkamera of Peter the Great
""This book explores the historical and geographical relationship of the arts and sciences through the varied interactions that developed between scientists and pyrotechnists from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Focusing on... more
""This book explores the historical and geographical relationship of the arts and sciences through the varied interactions that developed between scientists and pyrotechnists from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Focusing on three cities – London, Paris, and St. Petersburg - the book reveals a distinctive geographical patterning of art-science relations, and traces the many ways that fireworks artists and natural philosophers transformed each other's work. "Fireworks" explores the diverse sciences that shaped fireworks, including mathematics, classical literature, architecture, chemistry, and astronomy. The book is based on many new archives and visual records, and includes numerous illustrations and colour plates.
Chapters examine the following themes:
1. Gunners, Fireworks, and Alchemy
2. Fireworks and Natural Magic
3. Fireworks and the Experimental Philosophy (Robert Boyle)
4. Fireworks in Russia (Mikhail Lomonosov)
5. Italian pyrotechnists in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg (Green Park)
6. Fireworks and the Enlightenment/ Pyrotechnic Theories of Electricity (Diderot)
7. Fireworks as Rational Recreations (Pleasure Gardens)
Chapters examine the following themes:
1. Gunners, Fireworks, and Alchemy
2. Fireworks and Natural Magic
3. Fireworks and the Experimental Philosophy (Robert Boyle)
4. Fireworks in Russia (Mikhail Lomonosov)
5. Italian pyrotechnists in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg (Green Park)
6. Fireworks and the Enlightenment/ Pyrotechnic Theories of Electricity (Diderot)
7. Fireworks as Rational Recreations (Pleasure Gardens)
Research Interests: History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Military History, Geography, and 28 morePhilosophy of Science, History and Philosophy of Chemistry, Art History, French History, Architecture, Early Modern History, Performance Studies, Media History, Space and Place, History of Technology, History of Science, Eighteenth Century History, Enlightenment, Spectacle, History Of London, Architectural History, Art and Science, Science, Technology and Society, Fire History, Geography of Science, Russian History, Early Modern Intellectual History, Space And Place (Art), Early Modern Italy, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Early Modern London, and Architecture and Public Spaces
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... In his correspondence he discussed the Panopticon alongside accounts of the 'two legged tormentor' Benson. 18 ... 8 For most of Catherine the Great's rule, two opposing parties, one surrounding... more
... In his correspondence he discussed the Panopticon alongside accounts of the 'two legged tormentor' Benson. 18 ... 8 For most of Catherine the Great's rule, two opposing parties, one surrounding the Orlov brothers and another led by Nikita Panin, vied for authority in the Russian ...
In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela Smith notes that while historians have revealed important transfers of methods and tools between artisanry and the sciences in the early modern period (circa 14501750), none have viewed this story from... more
In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela Smith notes that while historians have revealed important transfers of methods and tools between artisanry and the sciences in the early modern period (circa 14501750), none have viewed this story from the artisans' perspective. Focusing ...
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Like recent works by Jonathan Sterne, Mark Katz, and other scholars, this book has much to say about the history of the music industry and musical culture. It reflects a merging of interests between scholars in different fields and... more
Like recent works by Jonathan Sterne, Mark Katz, and other scholars, this book has much to say about the history of the music industry and musical culture. It reflects a merging of interests between scholars in different fields and disciplines and throws light on new directions in ...
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In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela Smith notes that while historians have revealed important transfers of methods and tools between artisanry and the sciences in the early modern period (circa 14501750), none have viewed this story from... more
In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela Smith notes that while historians have revealed important transfers of methods and tools between artisanry and the sciences in the early modern period (circa 14501750), none have viewed this story from the artisans' perspective. Focusing ...
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This essay, revised from an original version that appeared in 2000, reconstructs the genealogy of the Panopticon, which since the work of Michel Foucault has been associated with modern regimes of control, as a model of contemporary... more
This essay, revised from an original version that appeared in 2000, reconstructs the genealogy of the Panopticon, which since the work of Michel Foucault has been associated with modern regimes of control, as a model of contemporary society managed through surveillance and diffused power. Although historians routinely attribute the design of the Panopticon to Jeremy Bentham, in fact it was the invention of his brother, Samuel Bentham, while serving Prince Potemkin in the new southern provinces of the Russian empire in the 1780s. The essay provides a context for Samuel’s Panopticon and suggests how indebted the institution was to the theatricality of noble life in Russia at this time, and to the political spectacles of the imperial Russian court. The Panopticon, it is recalled, was created as part of a ‘production utopia’ Samuel was building on Potemkin’s estate to be shown off to the Empress Catherine II during a tour of newly-acquired imperial territories. The essay thus challenges Foucault and others’ assertion that the Panopticon represented a radically new form of power at the close of the eighteenth century. Rather, the Panopticon owed a debt to the ‘theatre of absolutism’ that subsequent versions, and historical accounts, have erased from view.
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Cultural History, Russian Studies, Architecture, and 13 moreEighteenth Century History, Enlightenment, Surveillance Studies, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Michel Foucault, Bentham, Russian History, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Catherine the Great, History of architecture, Panopticism, and Bentham, Mill, and Utilitarianism
This essay is about the history of recycling and explores how natural philosophers (scientists) re-used and made do with materials in seventeenth and eighteenth-century experimental sites. The discussion examines second-hand markets for... more
This essay is about the history of recycling and explores how natural philosophers (scientists) re-used and made do with materials in seventeenth and eighteenth-century experimental sites. The discussion examines second-hand markets for scientific instruments, the adaptation of architectural space to experimental inquiry, maintenance, repair, and other forms of 'recycling' in science. The essay is the first in a planned series exploring the theme of the sustainability of modern science.
Research Interests: History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Philosophy of Science, and 31 moreHistory and Philosophy of Chemistry, Sustainable Communities, Early Modern History, British History, Material Culture Studies, Environmental Studies, Green Chemistry, Environmental History, History of Science, Computer Networks, Eighteenth Century History, Seventeenth Century, Recycling, Enlightenment, Science, Waste recycling, Science, Technology and Society, Early Modern Material Culture, Early Modern Britain, Environmental Sustainability, Sustainable Architecture, History of scientific instruments, Anthropology of Waste, Databases, Material Culture, Green Building, Software, Robert Boyle, Benjamin Franklin, Rubbish, and Science and Technology Studies
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In the nineteenth century leisured Londoners might visit the theaters to experience spectacle, but they could also tour the sights of the city. A significant, if surprising, tourist destination was the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, home to... more
In the nineteenth century leisured Londoners might visit the theaters to experience spectacle, but they could also tour the sights of the city. A significant, if surprising, tourist destination was the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, home to the Royal Artillery since the early eighteenth century. This paper explores the spectacular and theatrical dimensions of Woolwich Arsenal, emphasizing the institution’s multiple roles as a hub of empire, as a center for tourism, and as an institution that was well-connected to other sites of theatre and performance in London. The exhibitionary skills of Woolwich gunners are also shown to have contributed directly to the success of new technologies used to extend the British empire. Besides being a central military institution in the nineteenth century, the Royal Arsenal was also a vibrant site of exhibition and performance. At select times the Arsenal was open to the public, and the public enjoyed visiting. One visitor described the Arsenal as “the palladium of our Empire, where one wonder succeeds another so rapidly that the mind of a visitor is kept in a continual gaze of admiration.” Gunnery was a spectacle, educational, patriotic, improving, and entertaining. Artillerists staged grand parades, reviews, and mock skirmishes, showed off military hardware on Woolwich Common, and displayed imperial trophies in an oriental-styled museum, the Royal Military Repository. Artillerists also continued their traditional role of performing grand fireworks displays for royal occasions such as coronations, weddings, and birthdays, and in the Arsenal the royal artificers managed London’s largest pyrotechnic manufactory, the ‘Royal Laboratory’. Fireworks linked Woolwich to other public and commercial sites of exhibition in London such as the pleasure gardens, while the abstract patterns of light which artillerists displayed helped to inspire new optical media such as the Kaleidoscope. Exploring the Arsenal as a site of public display not only expands our map of London’s exhibitions in the nineteenth century, but also reveals important skills and techniques of performance which artillerists exploited in promoting novel technical projects. After examining the exhibition culture of the Arsenal, the paper considers the war rockets invented by Sir William Congreve, 2nd Bart., c. 1800-1820, to demonstrate how the exhibition practices of Woolwich Arsenal proved critical in making his new invention a successful weapon often used in Britain’s imperial campaigns.
Research Interests: History, European History, Military History, Cultural History, Artillery, and 10 moreTourism Studies, Theatre Studies, Theatre History, British History, Space and Place, Spectacle, History Of London, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, 19th Century Britain, and Ceremony, Ritual and Performance
Pulkovo Observatory, founded in 1839 near St. Petersburg Russia, was celebrated for its precision astronomy and lavish state support. This paper explains the fortunes of Pulkovo by setting it in the context of astronomical... more
Pulkovo Observatory, founded in 1839 near St. Petersburg Russia, was celebrated for its precision astronomy and lavish state support. This paper explains the fortunes of Pulkovo by setting it in the context of astronomical institution-building across the Russian empire and of changes in imperial Russian culture under Tsar Nicholas I. Russian astronomy, it is argued, reflected the ‘theatrical’ nature of Nicholas’s Russia. The Tsar showcased impressive technical projects in the capital, visible to foreigners, while neglecting more distant institutions and endeavors. Central institutions and shows of patronage displayed an order that was typically lacking in the provincial backstage. Russian astronomy followed the trend, and Pulkovo is examined as another of Nicholas’s front-stage displays of patronage, with consequences for both the technical practices of the observatory and for the history of astronomy in the nineteenth century.
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Fireworks were carried or made on many European voyages of empire and exploration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This essay explores the uses of fireworks on the voyages of Captain James Cook in the 1760s-70s, as tools of... more
Fireworks were carried or made on many European voyages of empire and exploration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This essay explores the uses of fireworks on the voyages of Captain James Cook in the 1760s-70s, as tools of diplomacy, competition, play, and science. Cook and his crews showed fireworks in reciprocal entertainments with Pacific islanders, and recorded in unprecedented detail the reactions of Pacific people to their displays. The essay concludes by proposing a pyrotechnic context for the death of Captain Cook in Hawai'i in 1779.
Research Interests: History, Cultural History, Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Performance Studies, and 11 moreMaritime History, Eighteenth Century History, Colonialism, Spectacle, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Exploration History, British Empire, Empire, Pacific History, History of the British Empire, and Imperialism
In this essay, the career of an eighteenth-century Russian instrument-maker serves to reveal the complexities of the enlightened artisan’s identity. Though he is largely unknown in the West, Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735-1818) was... more
In this essay, the career of an eighteenth-century Russian instrument-maker serves to reveal the complexities of the enlightened artisan’s identity. Though he is largely unknown in the West, Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735-1818) was celebrated by Soviet historians as a great ‘self-taught’ inventor, an obscure provincial who went on to become a leading inventor in the Academy of Sciences. Kulibin’s activities offer a means to engage with the geography of instrument-making and the complexities of ‘head’ and ‘hand’. The essay follows Kulibin from his early days as a clockmaker in the town of Nizhni Novgorod to his appointment as supervisor of the Academy of Sciences’ instrument-making workshops in St. Petersburg, and considers the changing nature of representations of his craft skills this change of place entailed. Kulibin’s identity in Petersburg was hybrid, part independent and commercial inventor, part mechanical servant to the Academy, and part courtly client, and throughout his career these identities were variously in harmony or conflict. The essay then considers three aspects of Kulibin’s work, in bridge design, the construction of automata, and the production of optical instruments and illuminating lamps, to reveal how these identities were managed, both by Kulibin and his superiors, in efforts to bring the mechanical and intellectual dimensions of work closer together or further apart. The argument will be that no essential definition of Kulibin as a ‘head’, ‘hand’ or even mixture of both may stand, since different configurations of these notions were invoked by Kulibin and others to serve different circumstances. As such, the geography of mind and hand mattered – where one was dictated how the engagement of body and intellect were to be represented – and for this reason, special attention is paid throughout to the locations through which Kulibin passed.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Russian Studies, Philosophy of Science, Creativity--Knowledge Invention & Discovery, and 17 moreHistory of Technology, History of Science, Computer Networks, Eighteenth Century History, Enlightenment, Science, Technology and Society, Technology And Culture, Russian History, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, History of scientific instruments, Databases, Catherine the Great, European Enlightenment, Software, History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Science and Technology Studies
This essay argues that the often taken-for-granted alliance of pyrotechny with the science of chemistry is not an inevitable or natural relationship, but was forged in the course of disputes between various communities over the proper... more
This essay argues that the often taken-for-granted alliance of pyrotechny with the science of chemistry is not an inevitable or natural relationship, but was forged in the course of disputes between various communities over the proper form of pyrotechnic knowledge and practice in the eighteenth century. Fireworks had always been associated with chemistry, but it was not obvious that chemistry was the natural complement to pyrotechny or that pyrotechny was a form of applied chemistry. The essay thus describes several forms of pyrotechnic practice and associated knowledge in the eighteenth century, centered on the ideas of gunners working for the state, itinerant families of artisans working privately, and a variety of savants who criticized their work. Different groups favored different definitions of what was essential to pyrotechnic knowledge. Gunners looked to artillery and mathematics as models of orderly knowledge and practice, while families exploited theatrical machinery and architecture to improve fireworks. Savants identified painting, architecture and belle-lettres as essential to pyrotechny. Only in the closing years of the eighteenth century and the wake of Lavoisier’s ‘chemical revolution’, in the course of disputes between these different kinds of practitioners and their critics, did chemistry emerge as ‘essential’ to fireworks art, its inevitability emerging as alternative connections disappeared subsequently. The essay also questions characterizations of artisanal and scientific knowledge as ‘secretive’ and ‘open’ respectively, by showing how openness and secrecy were not essential features of science and art but strategies deployed in the course of disputes to represent oneself favorably or to criticize an opponent.
Research Interests: History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Military History, Cultural History, and 10 morePhilosophy of Science, History and Philosophy of Chemistry, Early Modern History, History of Technology, History of Science, Enlightenment, Spectacle, Early Modern Europe, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, and Early Modern Era
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Historians often note the ancient origins of fireworks in China, and the West’s admiration for Chinese pyrotechnics. Yet, as this essay argues, European views of Chinese fireworks varied considerably between the late sixteenth and early... more
Historians often note the ancient origins of fireworks in China, and the West’s admiration for Chinese pyrotechnics. Yet, as this essay argues, European views of Chinese fireworks varied considerably between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth century, showing little uniformity. In a context of complex and changing relations with China, Europeans did not always assume Chinese fireworks surpassed their own, and even praise of Chinese fireworks could carry implicitly condescending meanings. Europeans also imitated Chinese fireworks, but the means by which they did so changed significantly between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the eighteenth-century taste for chinoiserie encouraged efforts to discover the secrets and recipes of Chinese fireworks, the growth of science in Europe led to a more critical ‘technical Orientalism’ in the early nineteenth century, as men of science claimed to be able to surpass Chinese pyrotechnics using experimental physics and chemistry. Even then, however, Chinese fireworks came to dominate the western trade in pyrotechnics, so that practices often did not match with representations.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Art History, Early Modern History, and 17 moreChinese Studies, Media History, History of Technology, Eighteenth Century History, Seventeenth Century, Enlightenment, Asian History, Art and Science, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, Chinese Language and Culture, History Of Technology (Technology), China, History of Military Technology, Chinese history (History), Chinoiserie, Pyrotechnology, and Chinoiserie in Europe
This essay uncovers the settings in which coal gas and hydrogen were first used to generate light, leading to the creation of a gas industry lighting streets, homes, and factories in the early nineteenth century. These settings, it is... more
This essay uncovers the settings in which coal gas and hydrogen were first used to generate light, leading to the creation of a gas industry lighting streets, homes, and factories in the early nineteenth century. These settings, it is argued, were primarily theatrical – spectacular shows where gas was used to imitate fireworks and create impressive illuminating effects. That such settings have been forgotten in the standard histories of gas-lighting is then explained by a change in the geography of gas in the early nineteenth century. When protagonists in the industrialization of gas-lighting Frederick Windsor and William Murdoch became embroiled in priority disputes over the invention, both accused the other of being a mere theatrical showman, and both denied any links to such activities. The essay thus reveals the spectacular origins of gas-lighting, the importance of geography for the history of invention, and some of the ways in which a change of location could affect issues of authorship and intellectual property in the nineteenth century.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Philosophy of Science, Theatre Studies, and 9 moreTheatre History, History of Technology, History of Science, Enlightenment, Spectacle, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Science, Technology and Society, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, and Technology And Culture
Everyone is familiar with fireworks, common to festivals and celebrations across the world. At first glance, the history of science might appear to have little to do with the history of these explosive devices. However, fireworks were an... more
Everyone is familiar with fireworks, common to festivals and celebrations across the world. At first glance, the history of science might appear to have little to do with the history of these explosive devices. However, fireworks were an important element of court culture in Europe, which relied on spectacle and festival to manifest the power of princes. From the fifteenth century, courts regularly set off fireworks around elaborate theatrical scenery and ephemeral temples, fascinating audiences with a variety of exotic motions and effects exploding in the night sky. Fireworks also intrigued natural philosophers, and over several centuries there were diverse interactions among the sciences and pyrotechny.
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This essay examines responses to the voyages of Captain James Cook in Russia during the period 1778-1821. In the first decade following Cook’s third voyage, Russians were relatively indifferent to Cook. However, in the next decade new... more
This essay examines responses to the voyages of Captain James Cook in Russia during the period 1778-1821. In the first decade following Cook’s third voyage, Russians were relatively indifferent to Cook. However, in the next decade new initiatives led to a series of Russian circumnavigations in which both the reputation and practices of Cook’s voyages were paramount as models for Russian explorers. The paper explores this shift in attitudes to Cook and seeks to explain it within the historical context of the reigns of Catherine the Great and Alexander I. In this period, according to the semioticians Lotman and Uspenskii, ‘theatre invaded life’, as the Russian nobility sought to play-act at being foreigners, and in particular romantic heroes. Cook’s fascination for the circumnavigators may be seen as part of this fashion for romanticized, historicized hero-worship. The article thus raises questions about the notion of center and periphery in historiography of Enlightened exploration, highlighting the importance of Russia’s own cultural and technical traditions in shaping the reception of Cook.
Research Interests: History, Maritime History, Naval History, Imperial History, Colonialism, and 10 moreEighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Exploration History, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Russian History, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Catherine the Great, Empire, Imperialism, and Tsarist Empire, Russian Intellectual History
This essay examines the career of Johann Daniel Schumacher, secretary to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1725 to 1759, in order to illustrate the flexible nature of expertise in an early scientific academy and the ways in... more
This essay examines the career of Johann Daniel Schumacher, secretary to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1725 to 1759, in order to illustrate the flexible nature of expertise in an early scientific academy and the ways in which that expertise needed to be negotiated to suit different demands from the court, government, and academy across several changes of regime. Schumacher, whose activities have often been vilified by historians, is shown to have been an astute administrator, whose activities demonstrate the importance of mediating roles in shaping academic expertise in the eighteenth century.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Philosophy of Science, Early Modern History, History of Science, and 12 moreComputer Networks, Enlightenment, Sociology of Expertise, Russian History, Sociology of Science, Russia (History), Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Databases, History and Sociology of Expertise, Software, and Science and Technology Studies
Research Interests: European History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Philosophy of Science, English Literature, and 9 moreEarly Modern History, History of Science, History and Philosophy of Biology, Medical Humanities, The Body, Science, Technology and Society, Frankenstein, History of Medicine and the Body, and Mary Shelley
New media and digital art have prompted a myriad of experiments integrating art with new inventions and technologies, often traced in the work of ‘media archeologists’. This essay explores the historical relationship between art, science,... more
New media and digital art have prompted a myriad of experiments integrating art with new inventions and technologies, often traced in the work of ‘media archeologists’. This essay explores the historical relationship between art, science, and invention through a consideration of the changing meanings of these terms and their shifting senses, distinctions, convergences, and interactions. I suggest that such practices have always been related and mutually constitutive, but in different ways dependent on local, historical circumstances. Rather than seek out essential qualities of these various practices in order to identify similarities and differences between art and science, or simply trace the movements of objects or techniques between supposedly self-evident arenas, such qualities need to be carefully mapped and seen as the strategic efforts of historical actors to shape the meanings that techniques carry and the directions in which they develop. Using the insights of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), the essay proposes that there is nothing inherent in actions or artifacts to designate them as artistic or scientific. Rather these identities come to be via a process of social negotiation, in which techniques emerge, stabilize, and may then endure as “media”, “art”, or “experiments”. A number of historical techniques from several historical periods are explored here to reveal these negotiated identities. Techniques such as the telescope ca. 1600, the Panopticon ca. 1800, and the Global Positioning System ca. 2000 all raised novel possibilities of observation, surveillance, knowledge and travel in their respective eras, and served as sites of artful science and playful invention. Together with other technological careers, these reveal a sketch, at least, of quite substantial historical transformations in the economy of art, science, invention, and media, together with the social negotiations that such transformations entailed.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Philosophy of Science, and 19 moreArt History, Technology, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Media History, History of Technology, History of Science, Computer Networks, Surveillance (Sociology), Surveillance Studies, Art and Science, Sociology of Science, Digital Arts, Surveillance, Databases, Software, Panopticism, Media Archeology, and Science and Technology Studies
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans voyaging to the Americas and Pacific often displayed technical artifacts such as fireworks, astrolabes, electrical machines and optical devices to the peoples they encountered.... more
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans voyaging to the Americas and Pacific often displayed technical artifacts such as fireworks, astrolabes, electrical machines and optical devices to the peoples they encountered. Europeans made these displays because they took such artifacts as signs of their mastery of the arts and evidence of their enlightenment. This paper argues that technical displays also featured significantly on the first Russian circumnavigations of the world in the early nineteenth century. When Russian officers trained in the British Royal Navy first traveled to the Pacific, Japan, and America, they not only modeled their activities on British and other European voyages of exploration, but also adopted European practices of technical display. However, different parties on the circumnavigations approached displays in different and conflicting ways, as an examination of the first voyage, under A. J. von Krusenstern and Iu. Lisianskii in 1803-6, demonstrates. During a visit to Japan, competing ideas of display led to conflicts among Russian and Baltic German officers, manifesting the ambiguities of technical display as a signifier of enlightenment. Ultimately, Russia’s navigators overcame these problems by representing voyages in carefully crafted publications after the voyages concluded. These turned the circumnavigations into a grand technical display, intended to impress upon Europe Russia’s enlightened and civilized identity.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Russian Studies, Philosophy of Science, and 23 moreTechnology, Performance Studies, History of Japan, Maritime History, History of Technology, History of Science, Computer Networks, Imperial History, Japanese History, Colonialism, Spectacle, Exploration History, Global History, Russian History, Imperial Russia, History of scientific instruments, Databases, Empire, Pacific History, Software, Imperialism, 19th century Russian History, and Science and Technology Studies
Historians have pitted ‘localist’ accounts of imperial technology transfer against ‘universalist’ accounts. Rather than impose competing analytical geographies on historical events, this essay attends to “actors’ geographies”, the... more
Historians have pitted ‘localist’ accounts of imperial technology transfer against ‘universalist’ accounts. Rather than impose competing analytical geographies on historical events, this essay attends to “actors’ geographies”, the constructions of technical transfer that historical actors developed themselves in negotiations over imperial technologies. In a dispute between the East India Company and Sir William Congreve over the use of Congreve’s war rockets in early nineteenth-century India, both parties deployed versions of ‘universalist’ and ‘localist’ accounts to support their agendas. Hence both accounts are needed to make sense of the dispute, while their shared attributes offer new perspectives on imperial technology transfer, and highlight the value of immobility in making technical change succeed.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Geography, Philosophy of Science, Technology, and 22 moreHistory of India, Space and Place, History of Science, Computer Networks, Imperial History, Colonialism, Asian History, Science, Technology and Society, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, History Of Technology (Technology), Technology and Society, British Empire, Geography of Science, Global History, Technology And Culture, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Modern Indian History, Databases, Empire, Software, Imperialism, and Science and Technology Studies
Russian expeditions to observe the transit of Venus in 1874 provide an opportunity to explore the nature of astronomy and society in late Imperial Russia. This essay brings to light the personnel and places involved in Russian missions... more
Russian expeditions to observe the transit of Venus in 1874 provide an opportunity to explore the nature of astronomy and society in late Imperial Russia. This essay brings to light the personnel and places involved in Russian missions and examines their integration within the burgeoning networks of Russian imperial power designed to bring efficient governance to the empire in the wake of the disastrous Crimean War. For the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, brother of Tsar Alexander II, and his reform-minded circle, astronomy and geography were part of an ef- fort to reinvigorate empire and autocracy on more participatory models. Transit expeditions should demonstrate the vitality of Russian science and empire to foreign audiences. Simultaneously, another flurry of expeditions was taking place, as populist revolutionaries began “going to the people” to spread messages of disruption and revolution. How the transit passed across these differing interpretations of the right forms of imperial travel and “scientific” governance in Russia form the focus of the essay.
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Early modern Europeans routinely compared nature to a theater or spectacle, so it makes sense to examine the practices of observing real spectacles and performances in order to better comprehend acts of witnessing nature. Using examples... more
Early modern Europeans routinely compared nature to a theater or spectacle, so it makes sense to examine the practices of observing real spectacles and performances in order to better comprehend acts of witnessing nature. Using examples from the history of fireworks, this essay explores acts of observing natural and artificial spectacles between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries and suggests these acts of observation were mutually constitutive and entailed ongoing and diverse exchanges. The essay follows the changing ways in which audiences were imagined or expected to react to fireworks and shows how these also shaped experiences of natural phenomena. Both natural and artificial spectacles were intended to teach morals about the state and nature, yet audiences rarely seemed to take away what they were expected to learn. The essay examines how performers thus sought to discipline audience observation, before exploring, in conclusion, how spectacle provided a vocabulary for discerning and articulating new natural phenomena, and sites for the pursuit of novel experiments. Link to online version: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8258986
Research Interests: History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Philosophy of Science, Art History, and 18 moreTheatre Studies, Theatre History, Early Modern History, Performance Studies, Audience Studies, History of Technology, History of Science, Computer Networks, Audience and Reception Studies, Enlightenment, Spectacle, Early Modern England, Early Modern Europe, Art and Science, Early Modern Era, Databases, Software, and Science and Technology Studies
This essay examines the earliest development of military rockets by the English inventor William Congreve c.1805-10. Congreve imagined economic and scientific principles might allow him to imitate effective Indian rockets used against the... more
This essay examines the earliest development of military rockets by the English inventor William Congreve c.1805-10. Congreve imagined economic and scientific principles might allow him to imitate effective Indian rockets used against the British in the Anglo-Indian wars of the 1790s. Congreve viewed his rockets as ‘rational’, operated via an experimental system which dispensed with the need for any skilled labor, save Congreve’s own inventive capacities. But when rockets were put to the test, naval officers, artisans, and other inventors all disputed this claim, and the essay shows how their various skills proved indispensable in making the rocket work. Congreve responded by erasing both distant Indian and local British contributions to the rocket system. The career of Congreve rockets thus demonstrates how European processes of disciplinary reform around 1800 were intimately connected with orientalizing tendencies which sought to portray distant cultures of the east as backward and static.
Research Interests: History, History of Science and Technology, Military History, Philosophy of Science, Technology, and 18 moreHistory of India, Maritime History, History of Technology, History of Science, Computer Networks, Colonialism, Science, Technology and Society, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Napoleonic Wars, Technology and Society, Technology And Culture, French Revolution and Napoleon, Databases, Empire, Rocket and Missile Technologies, Software, Imperialism, and Science and Technology Studies
In the eighth discourse of his Meteorology, René Descartes provided an explanation of the formation of the rainbow. This essay proposes that the Cartesian explanation was not simply an intellectual exercise but a response to remarkable... more
In the eighth discourse of his Meteorology, René Descartes provided an explanation of the formation of the rainbow. This essay proposes that the Cartesian explanation was not simply an intellectual exercise but a response to remarkable skills in the engineering of fountains in late renaissance courtly gardens. Rejecting distinctions between 'natural' and 'artificial' rainbows, Descartes used these fountains and his own constructions of artificial water drops to discern the causes of the rainbow by refraction and reflection and, by analogy, to suppose this the explanation of rainbows in the sky. Descartes’s account was motivated by what he called the ‘science of miracles’ and the search for a more spectacular form of fountain, using refraction to write signs in the sky.
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The relationship between the Royal Society and King Charles II during the Restoration has typically been presented historians as distant, with Charles mocking the virtuosi who self-organized their club with minimal interest and patronage... more
The relationship between the Royal Society and King Charles II during the Restoration has typically been presented historians as distant, with Charles mocking the virtuosi who self-organized their club with minimal interest and patronage from the crown. This essay suggests a closer proximity between the Society and the Monarchy using a different perspective, by looking at the ways experimental philosophy was related to royal ritual in the Restoration. Noting analogues between the performance of experiments and rituals such as executions and the ‘King’s Touch’, the essay goes on to explore a case when experimental inquiries became forms of royal ritual. Experiments with a French “styptique liquor” for staunching bloody wounds were appropriated by Charles and performed at court immediately after the Test Act of 1673. The Act temporarily abolished the royal rite of healing by touch (a miracle filled with Catholic association). Experiments with the liquor, I argue, served as a kind of ‘Protestant miracle’ for Charles, tending to the miraculous while remaining within the safer bounds of Protestant kingship. The value and interest placed in experimental philosophy shown by the crown was thus dependent on local, political circumstance and might vary significantly at different times.
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While he continues to be held up as a paragon of rational enlightenment, Isaac Newton's science was steeped in traditions of classical thought, biblical exegesis, natural magic and alchemy. This lecture, for a general audience, explored... more
While he continues to be held up as a paragon of rational enlightenment, Isaac Newton's science was steeped in traditions of classical thought, biblical exegesis, natural magic and alchemy. This lecture, for a general audience, explored these trends in Newton's thought and their significance for Newton's followers in the eighteenth century.
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What new directions can we bring to the study of material culture in the history of science? This one-day workshop explores the circulation and recirculation of materials in European chemistry c. 1760-1840. Supported by the Situating... more
What new directions can we bring to the study of material culture in the history of science? This one-day workshop explores the circulation and recirculation of materials in European chemistry c. 1760-1840. Supported by the Situating Chemistry project, and the British Society for the History of Science.
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What is science? What is art? Do they share any common understandings or are they different things? How do different disciplines view this problem? What does history tell us about this? Come to the Bloomsbury Festival this Saturday for an... more
What is science? What is art? Do they share any common understandings or are they different things? How do different disciplines view this problem? What does history tell us about this? Come to the Bloomsbury Festival this Saturday for an hour-long public discussion with Simon Werrett. Starts 1.00pm.
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There’s much more to fireworks than meets the eye. We use fireworks today for celebrations, but in the past fireworks had many different uses. This talk will show how fireworks were used for spectacular religious and political festivals... more
There’s much more to fireworks than meets the eye. We use fireworks today for celebrations, but in the past fireworks had many different uses. This talk will show how fireworks were used for spectacular religious and political festivals in European history, as tools of empire on voyages of exploration, as polite parlour-games and as dangerous weapons for radicals and rioters. Spectacle served many ends. Along the way, fireworks inspired scientists, artists, and poets and provided models for all kinds of inventions that have become part of the modern world. The legacy of these spectacles remains in everything from home-lighting to space exploration.
Research Interests: History, European History, Art History, History of Science, Spectacle, and Popular entertainments: circus, fair midways, amusement parks, variety acts, wild west shows, freaks and animals, etc -- 19th-century printing, advertising, and marketing; consumer goods -- Museum history and the exhibition of marvels and curiosities.
The session discusses the epistemic potentials and effects of glassware and its role in the development of modern ecological thinking.
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Currently many scientists are seeking ways to turn energy-hungry scientific research into a more sustainable practice. This paper uses examples from the history of science to explore potential avenues for making science sustainable. Prior... more
Currently many scientists are seeking ways to turn energy-hungry scientific research into a more sustainable practice. This paper uses examples from the history of science to explore potential avenues for making science sustainable. Prior to the twentieth century and 'Big Science', natural philosophers employed material culture in experimental settings with a care and thrift that has little considered by historians of science. In fact, the 'new science' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries featured a variety of techniques and approaches to knowledge-making that might be considered ‘sustainable’ today, and this paper will examine some of them. Drawing on the world of artisanal work and domestic labour, they included the adaptation of existing space to scientific research; the use and adaptation of locally-available material resources for experimental investigations; activities of maintenance and repair; and a widespread culture of second-hand exchange and material bricolage. The focus of this paper will be a series of exchanges between the electrician Tiberius Cavallo and the physician James Lind between 1782 and 1809 that illustrate many of these practices and show their import for the making of enlightened scientific knowledge.
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I'll be speaking on my current research alongside colleagues from around London. Topics will include history of science and medicine, philosophy and social studies of science.
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I'll be speaking about fireworks at this meeting in Rome on March 15/16, 2013.
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Russia’s first circumnavigators, whose expeditions to supply the Russian American Company in Alaska spanned the first decades of the nineteenth century, took much inspiration from British naval technique. Many Russian officers either... more
Russia’s first circumnavigators, whose expeditions to supply the Russian American Company in Alaska spanned the first decades of the nineteenth century, took much inspiration from British naval technique. Many Russian officers either trained in the Royal Navy or served with Russians who had done so. This paper will assess the links between British and Russian navigation techniques in light of these connections. I will consider the role, c. 1770-1830, of British navigational theory and practice in Russia, Russian trials and deployments of British instruments and chronometers, and Russian involvement in efforts to secure a reliable method of finding the longitude. I highlight the interdependence of the social and material culture of navigation. Russians placed great value on the measurements of British navigators, so that British and Russian instruments and reputations were calibrated together.
Research Interests: History, Philosophy of Science, British History, Maritime History, History of Science, and 14 moreNaval History, Imperial History, Exploration History, History of Astronomy, Global History, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Russian History, History of Imperialism, Imperial Russia, Russian Intellectual History, Imperial Russian Navy, Pacific History, British naval history, and 19th century Russian History
I spoke on early modern 'recycling' at a seminar organized for Lorraine Daston, together with Dr Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge) and Prof Martin Mulsow (Erfurt), chaired by Prof Laurence Brockliss (Oxford). The link takes you to a video of... more
I spoke on early modern 'recycling' at a seminar organized for Lorraine Daston, together with Dr Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge) and Prof Martin Mulsow (Erfurt), chaired by Prof Laurence Brockliss (Oxford). The link takes you to a video of the complete seminar.
Research Interests: History, European History, European History, History of Science and Technology, Philosophy of Science, and 13 moreVisual Studies, Art History, Early Modern History, Environmental History, History of Science, Eighteenth Century History, Seventeenth Century, Sociology Of Waste, History of Art, History of Collections, Environmental Sustainability, Collecting and Collections, and Anthropology of Waste
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Historians of imperial science and technology have criticised a ‘universalist’ model of the spread of science and technology which sees theories and artefacts produced in metropolitan centres and then diffused to imperial peripheries.... more
Historians of imperial science and technology have criticised a ‘universalist’ model of the spread of science and technology which sees theories and artefacts produced in metropolitan centres and then diffused to imperial peripheries. Decentering this picture, they have suggested that imperial science and technology are better seen from a ‘localist’ persepctive, as the hybrid products of local interactions, encounters, and circulations. This paper examines the historiography and geography of technology in empire through disputes surrounding the deployment of William Congreve’s war rockets in India by the East India Company in the early nineteenth century. I shall argue that this episode is best understood by taking into account “actor’s geographies”. Rather than present a single analyst’s geography, I consider the ways Congreve and the East India Company articulated competing geographical visions of how Congreve rockets should travel between Britain and India. These geographies reflected both ‘universalist’ and ‘localist’ descriptions of the spread of imperial technology, suggesting both approaches need to be kept in mind in our accounts of science, technology and empire.
Early modern fireworks fascinated audiences as exotic spectacles of fiery effects, as dreadful incendiary weapons of war, as strange and surprising products of alchemy and magic, and as models of Nature and even God’s operations. In this... more
Early modern fireworks fascinated audiences as exotic spectacles of fiery effects, as dreadful incendiary weapons of war, as strange and surprising products of alchemy and magic, and as models of Nature and even God’s operations. In this paper I use the history of fireworks to present a geography of art and science in early modern Europe. Historians from Edgar Zilsel to Pamela H. Smith have argued that craft practices helped to shape natural philosophy in the ‘Scientific Revolution’ by providing technical resources for experimenters, encouraging an empirical approach to knowledge-making, and focusing scholars on utilitarian goals. Comparing interactions between pyrotechnic artisans and natural philosophers in three locations - London, Paris, and St. Petersburg - during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this paper will argue that while art did indeed influence science, there was signficant geographical variation in these relations. Furthermore, the circulation of practitioners between these different locales changed the nature of relations between artisans and natural philosophers, and gave rise to both new forms of art, and new forms of science. Instead of a single, defining influence of art on science in the seventeenth-century ‘Scientific Revolution’, then, this paper will claim that a more reciprocal, geographically varied, and ongoing relationship has existed between art and science since the early modern period.
Recycling has played an important role in post-war environmentalism, yet equivalent practices of salvage, re-use, and recovery have a much older history. This paper explores the history of recycling and its significance in the history of... more
Recycling has played an important role in post-war environmentalism, yet equivalent practices of salvage, re-use, and recovery have a much older history. This paper explores the history of recycling and its significance in the history of the sciences and medicine. Exploring sites such as chemical laboratories, coffee-house auctions, flea markets, and dust heaps, I examine the changing relationships between recycling, science and medicine from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, and consider how practices of thrift, repair, re-use, and recovery helped shape a range of scientific and medical ideas, techniques and instruments in this period. I also ask how historical studies of recycling in science might assist in current environmental debates, and consider the value of focusing on the repair and re-use of material culture in science for current discussions of the ‘circulation of scientific knowledge’.
How is expertise to be managed in the assessment of technologies used in distant locations? How do actors decide where and how such assessments are to be made, and what elements shape the outcome of their deliberations? This paper... more
How is expertise to be managed in the assessment of technologies used in distant locations? How do actors decide where and how such assessments are to be made, and what elements shape the outcome of their deliberations? This paper explores the complexities of long-distance technological assessment by examining the deployment of Congreve war rockets from Britain in India during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The paper will argue that making British rockets work in India demanded a long process of hybridizing British and Indian techniques, materials, and personnel. Making rockets succeed depended on the support and critiques of both British and Indian skills and expertise, deployed equally in the metropole and colony.
