This paper reconstructs the historical geographies of a family holiday and field trip in 1952 to Glen Roy, Scotland, site of the famous Parallel Roads. The puzzle of the Parallel Roads' origin has generated a hefty literature over the years, much of it written by eminent scientists, but is here considered through an episode in the scientific history of Glen Roy that did not make the published record. The primary source is the Murray family's expedition logbook: a private and personal document that records the various aspects of life and work in the field. This is supplemented by the family's oral history. Drawing on concepts from science studies and geography, the paper tries to ‘get behind the science’ itself to explore the underlying motives and actions that make it happen. These are intrinsically geographical, because they shape, and are shaped by, the relationships between people, ideas and places. Two themes are central to the account of these other historical geographies of this trip to Glen Roy. The first of these is the coming together of a distinctly local community of knowledge in the Badenoch Field Club in the early 1950s. The second, revealed by the logbook's emphasis on storytelling, travelling and residing, is the way in which the presence of the family in the field changes the ways in which the site of scientific investigation is experienced and understood.

This paper extends discussions of the sociology of the early modern scientific community by paying particular attention to the geography of that community. The paper approaches the issue in terms of the scientific community's self image as a Republic of Letters. Detailed analysis of patterns of citation in two British geography books is used to map the ‘imagined community’ of geographers from the late Renaissance to the age of Enlightenment. What were the geographical origins of authors cited in geography books and how did this change over time? To what extent was scholarship from other cultural arenas integrated into European geography? Such an analysis draws on and interrogates recent work in the history of science and in the history of scholarship more broadly, work which has made important contributions to our understanding of the historical geography of scholarly communities in early modern Europe.

This paper outlines the contours of a historical geography of science. It begins by arguing for the relevance of spatially oriented histories of scientific thought and practice. The paper then considers three different historical geographies of science: those concerned with the places and spaces of science, those that detail the spatial contexts of scientific endeavour, and those that analyse the internal ‘cartographies’ of scientific theories and methods. The paper concludes with a discussion of other possible avenues of investigation in this field.

Scientific knowledge is made in a lot of different places. Does it matter where? Can the location of scientific endeavour make any difference to the conduct of science? And even more important, can it affect the content of science? In my view the answer to these questions is yes.

Argument

This paper is detective work. I aim to show that the brilliant Pythagorean mathematician Archytas of Tarentum was the founder of ancient Greek mathematical optics. The evidence is indirect. (1) A fragment of Aristotle preserved in Iamblichus is one of two doxographical notices to mention Pythagorean work in optics. (2) Apuleius credits Archytas with a theory of visual rays which saves the principle that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. I argue that the source from which Apuleius got this information was the Catoptrics of Archimedes, the genuineness of which I defend against Knorr's hypothesis that it is the Euclidean Catoptrics, which had been misattributed to Archimedes. (3) The omission of optics from the mathematical curriculum in Plato's Republic, and the Timaeus' wholly physical account of mirror-images, can be explained as polemical, for it is well attested that optics was practiced in the Academy. The reason Plato does not mention optics is that he objected to Archytas using mathematics to understand the physical world rather than to transcend it.

Argument

The influence of Galen on the subsequent interpretation of the history of ancient medicine has been substantial. This paper explores the consequences of adopting a non-Galenic perspective in two different areas of research. It argues that Galen's own career, and his own views of the ideal physician, cannot be taken as typical of most ancient medical practitioners; and that the theory of the four humors, blood, bile, black bile, and phlegm, did not become a universal standard until after Galen. That theory was merely one of several variations on the theme of body fluids, and entered Greek medicine relatively late. Hippocratic contemporaries of Galen accepted it alongside other theories from the Corpus, e.g. Diseases I, that modern scholars have viewed as incompatible.

Argument

If visual inspection of corpses was central to the development of anatomy in modern Europe, one may ask which of the senses was important for the emergence of the predominant currents of scholarly medical knowledge and practice in third- and second-century B.C.E. China? This article argues that it was tactile perception prompted by a tactile exploration of living bodies. The evidence, derived from a close reading of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, the 105th chapter of the Records of the Historian (Shi ji), and selected passages from the Huang Di's Inner Canon (Huang Di nei jing), points to three important trends: first, the tactile exploration of the extremities led to a rich vocabulary of compound words for pain (tong) as localized in specific body parts; second, the tactile exploration of the mai (vessels/pulses) gave rise to an even richer vocabulary on qualities of touch in pulse diagnostics; and third, the tactile exploration of the abdomen led to the assessment of the quality of the internal viscera (zang) with words that generally were used for describing the tactile quality of skin and flesh. This finding may appear surprising in the light of later developments during the dynastic history of Chinese medicine where tactile exploration of abdomen and extremities would appear unseemly. The author suggests that extensive tactile explorations of the body were possible before Confucius' teachings became a predominant aspect of state ideology.

Argument

How well does Aristotle's abstract definition of nature in the Physics cope with some significant agricultural facts? Are its implications in tension with the workings of artificial teleology? How Aristotle might categorize domesticated plants is problematic: they are neither obviously natural nor obviously artificial. That artificial things generally retain an intrinsic source of change does not help us to settle the status of “living quasi-artefacts.” A survey of Theophrastus reveals that many agricultural techniques go against nature, rather than collaborating with it; and, moving from the practical to the theoretical, the Mechanica might suggest a scientific program at odds with the Aristotelian tradition of passive observation. Reflection on the Historia Animalium exposes difficulties in specifying natural and artificial environments which exacerbate the puzzle, and reinforce the rationale for Aristotelians to adopt an active stance when investigating nature. The Aristotelian olive remains mysterious.

Nineteenth-century natural history societies sought to address the concerns of a scientific and a local public. Focusing on natural history societies in late Victorian Scotland, this paper concentrates on the relations between associational natural history and local civic culture. By examining the recruitment rhetoric used by leading members and by exploring the public meetings organized by the societies, the paper signals a number of ways in which members worked to make their societies important public bodies in Scottish towns. In addition, by narrating a number of disputes between members over how natural history societies should operate, the paper shows how civic science could occasion social discord rather than harmony. Overall, by investigating the presence of field clubs in different urban settings, and describing members' attempts to portray natural historical pursuits as a significant cultural endeavour, the paper seeks to map an important part of the historical geography of Scottish civic science.

Argument

The term “universal” is ambiguous; it can indicate either what actually exists in several instances, or what can so exist, even if it is actually exemplified in only one instance. The former sense implies the latter, but not vice versa. It is suggested that form for Aristotle is universal in the latter sense, including what is part of the nature of a species but not individual accidents due to the matter, and that this may help to explain a problematic passage in Metaphysics Z 15. Analysis of passages in Metaphysics Z 8 may however suggest that form as universal in the former sense exists only as a potentiality. The claim that form includes only specific, not individual features has implications for Aristotle's theory of heredity; more generally, his theory of form reflects the tensions between Platonist and non-Platonist elements in his thought and his methods of enquiry.