Yves Simonin, a rather obscure professor of hydrography in Bayonne, submitted five scientific papers to the Paris Academy of Sciences between 1738 and 1740, which only survive in the original manuscript versions. The topics Simonin deals with in these texts are essentially three: the rectification of navigation charts of the Southern Sea, the shape of the Earth, and the heliocentric theory. Far from acknowledging Simonin's contribution to the ongoing academic debate as a valuable one, the institution systematically rejected his work. (...) In this paper, I first provide a critical analysis of Simonin's manuscripts. As I argue, their originality lies in the adoption of the perspective of a practitioner of and expert in navigational techniques. I then investigate the reasons behind the Academy's negative reception of Simonin's papers, casting light on the expertise required to participate in academic debates in the mid-18th century, and on the limits set by the institution to the possibility of external intervention. (shrink)

ArgumentThe British Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, spent four months on a Scottish mountainside in 1774, making observations of zenith stars and coordinating a detailed survey of the size and shape of the mountain Schiehallion, in order to demonstrate and quantify what was known as “the attraction of mountains.” His endeavors were celebrated in London, where it was stated that he had given proof of the universality of Newtonian gravitation and allowed for a calculation of the relative densities of the earth (...) as a whole and the earth near its surface. This paper argues that the “Schiehallion Experiment” was as much a trial of the precision of Maskelyne's instruments and their expert management as it was a trial of Newtonian theory. By tracing the biography of the key instrument used by Maskelyne, his zenith sector, we see how much personal credibility was a stake for him in Scotland. By considering the mountainside as a place to test and reveal the precision of astronomical instruments we see a link between the Scottish endeavors and Maskelyne's ambitions for the Greenwich Observatory. (shrink)

Although historians have long recognized the importance of long-range scientific expeditions in both the practice and culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, it is less well understood how this form of scientific organization emerged and became established in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late seventeenth century new European scientific institutions tried to make use of globalized trade networks for their own ends, but to do so proved difficult. This paper offers a case history of one such expedition, (...) the voyage sponsored by the French Académie royale des sciences to Gorée and the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1681–3. The voyage of Varin, Deshayes and de Glos reveals how the process of travel itself caused problems for instruments and observers alike. (shrink)