This paper examines how the 19th-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace used biogeographical mapping practices to draw a boundary line between Malay and Papuan groups in the colonial East Indies in the 1850s. Instead of looking for a continuous gradient of variation between Malays and Papuans, Wallace chose to look for a sharp discontinuity between them. While Wallace's "human biogeography" paralleled his similar project to map plant and animal distributions in the same region, he invoked distinctive "mental and moral" features (...) as more decisive than physical ones. By following Wallace in the field, we can see his field mapping practices in action -- how he conquered the problem of local particularity in the case of human variation. His experiences on the periphery of expanding European empires, far from metropolitan centers, shaped Wallace's observations in the field. Taking his cues from colonial racial categories and his experiences collaborating with local people in the field, Wallace constructed the boundary line between the Malay and Papuan races during several years of work in the field criss-crossing the archipelago as a scientific collector. This effort to map a boundary line in the field was a bold example of using the practices of survey science to raise the status of field work by combining fact gathering with higher-level generalizing, although the response back in the metropole was less than enthusiastic. Upon his return to Britain in the 1860s, Wallace found that appreciation for observational facts he had gathered in the field was not accompanied by agreement with his theoretical interpretations and methods for doing human biogeography. (shrink)

Biological field stations proliferated in the Rocky Mountains region of the western United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay examines these Rocky Mountain field stations as hybrid lab-field sites from the perspective of the field side of the dichotomy: as field sites with raised walls rather than as laboratories whose walls with the natural world have been lowered. Not only were these field stations transformed to be more like laboratories, but they were also embedded within (...) the particular regional environmental and institutional context of the Rocky Mountains. Using the University of Colorado’s Mountain Laboratory at Tolland and other contemporaneous sites as examples, this essay analyzes key features of these sites, including their location within transportation networks, buildings, equipment, personnel, scheduling, recreational and social activities, and other material and social practices on the ground. Considering both the distinctive and shared characteristics of the Rocky Mountain field stations in comparison to other types of field stations provides a more complete picture of the diversity and range of lab-field hybrid sites in the biological sciences in the early twentieth-century United States. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the field network – linking together lay observers in geographically distributed locations with a central figure who aggregated their locally produced observations into more general, regional knowledge – as a historically emergent mode of knowledge production. After discussing the significance of weather knowledge as a vital domain in which field networks have operated, it describes and analyzes how a more robust and systematized weather observing field network became established and maintained on the ground in the early twentieth (...) century. This case study, which examines two Kansas City-based local observer networks supervised by the same U.S. Weather Bureau office, demonstrates some of the key issues involved in maintaining field networks, such as the role of communications infrastructure, especially the telegraph, the procedures designed to make local observation more systematic and uniform, and the centralized, hierarchical power relations that underpinned even a low-status example of knowledge production on the periphery. (shrink)

Late nineteenth‐century public museums in the United States were intentionally built to be modern, guided by administrators like George Brown Goode toward scientific goals that included preservation, research, and education. Self‐consciously preoccupied with the management of museums, intent on attaining mastery over the objects that constituted their museums, and persuaded that meaning derived not just from the objects themselves but from their explanation and configuration by experts, museum masters led a “new museum” movement. A century later, the critiques of postmodern (...) scholars attest to the museum directors’ effective establishment of a modern profile. Historians of science, who once could take these institutions for granted as a lightly marked center of authority, now may use methods of social and cultural studies to open their institutional and intellectual frames. While cautious about theory‐driven arguments, such scholars benefit from the issues raised by cultural critics even as they rely on their own documentary methods to ensure that science is an integral component when examining ideas, language, and practice in context. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, ornithology underwent significant changes. So far, these changes, basically, have been studied by focussing on the elite of professional biologists working at universities or state museums. However, important developments also occurred in what Lynn Nyhart has called “the civic realm” of science – the sphere given form by private naturalist associations, nature writers, taxidermists and school teachers. This article studies the changing dynamics of civic ornithology, by looking at one particular case: the influential orinthological observatory (...) in Rossitten, East-Prussia. This observatory, the first of its kind, was founded in 1901 and led, for the first three decades of its existence, by the minister Johannes Thienemann. This article analyses the ornithological practices Thienemann developed in Rossitten and the rhetoric he used to defend these practices. In both, so it is argued, one finds a mixture of the traditional, locally anchored naturalist approach with the new ideals of the “modern” and “experimental” university laboratories. The innovations which Thienemann introduced in this hybrid form of ornithology called for specific spatial strategies which made optimal use of the natural chatacteristics of his workplace and which mobilized a large civic network of geograhically scattered amateurs. At the same time, his work also altered the space he shared with the birds – materially, conceptually and culturally. Thus, this article maintains Thienemann's ornithology can only be understood by acknowledging its continuous interaction with the geographical and civic context in which it arose. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, ornithology underwent significant changes. So far, these changes, basically, have been studied by focussing on the elite of professional biologists working at universities or state museums. However, important developments also occurred in what Lynn Nyhart has called "the civic realm" of science - the sphere given form by private naturalist associations, nature writers, taxidermists and school teachers. This article studies the changing dynamics of civic ornithology, by looking at one particular case: the influential orinthological observatory (...) in Rossitten, East-Prussia. This observatory, the first of its kind, was founded in 1901 and led, for the first three decades of its existence, by the minister Johannes Thienemann. This article analyses the ornithological practices Thienemann developed in Rossitten and the rhetoric he used to defend these practices. In both, so it is argued, one finds a mixture of the traditional, locally anchored naturalist approach with the new ideals of the "modern" and "experimental" university laboratories. The innovations which Thienemann introduced in this hybrid form of ornithology called for specific spatial strategies which made optimal use of the natural chatacteristics of his workplace and which mobilized a large civic network of geograhically scattered amateurs. At the same time, his work also altered the space he shared with the birds - materially, conceptually and culturally. Thus, this article maintains Thienemann's ornithology can only be understood by acknowledging its continuous interaction with the geographical and civic context in which it arose. (shrink)