This article analyzes a type of experiment, very popular in 18th-century natural philosophy, which has apparently not led to insights into nature but which was aesthetically especially attractive. These experiments--"mimetic experiments"--allow us to trace a connection between aesthetic appreciation in science and in art contemporaneous with the science. I use this case as a problem for McAllister's theory of aesthetic induction according to which aesthetic standards in science tend to be associated with empirical success and propose an alternative mechanism that (...) is able to account for the natural philosophers' predilection for unsuccessful but beautiful experiments. (shrink)

The public place of science and technology in Britain underwent a dramatic change during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy was still on the whole the province of a relatively small group of aficionados. London possessed only one institution devoted to the pursuit of natural knowledge: the Royal Society. The Royal Society also published what was virtually the only journal dealing exclusively with scientific affairs: the Philosophical Transactions. By 1851, when (...) the Great Exhibition opened its doors in Hyde Park to an audience of spectators that could be counted in the millions, the pursuit of science as a national need, its relationship to industrial progress were acceptable, if not uncontested facts for many commentators. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule’s scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title “On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis” where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory work (...) and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule’s experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule’s contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. (shrink)

The increased popularity of the label "cultural" within science studies, especially in relation to "cultural studies, " invites consideration of how it is and can be used in historical work. A lot more seems now to be invested in the notion of "cultural history. " This article examines some recent historiography of science as a means of considering what counts as cultural history in that domain and attempts to coordinate it with the sociologically informed studies of the past ten orfifteen (...) years. The label "sociocultural" seems a more useful term by which to capture recent developments. (shrink)