In 1875 Francis Galton was the first to study twins as a test of the relative strength of heredity and environment. This paper examines Galton's work on twins, using his surviving working papers. It shows that his enquiry was larger and more systematic than previously realized. Galton issued several hundred questionnaires to parents of twins, with the aim of establishing how far the similarities and differences between twins were affected by their life experiences. The paper also discusses Galton's study in relation to his understanding of the physiology of twinning and his theory of heredity. The modern concept of monozygotic twins had not yet been established, and the similarity between Galton's work and modern twin studies should not be overstated. While Galton's work was important as a pioneering study, in some respects his conclusions went beyond his evidence. The paper finally examines whether Galton's twin studies influenced his position on the links between social class, heredity and social mobility, and surveys the evidence for his views on these issues.

This paper argues that Goethe's collections, in particular his mineralogical collections, had both public and private purposes. The public purposes were closely tied to the tradition of mineralogizing exemplified by the Freiberg Mining Academy. Abraham Gottlob Werner provided technologies for standardizing mineralogical terminology and identification, and Goethe hoped that these technologies would allow for a vast network of collectors and observers who would collate their observations and develop a model of the Earth's structure. His own cabinet, in particular his collection of rocks (Gebirgsarten), was to be a representative sample of rock formations in particular locations that could reveal features of the Earth's structure and history. Goethe was also responsible for the scientific collections of Jena University. He argued that if such collections were to be useful for teaching and research, a goal he strongly supported, they could no longer be treated as the private property of professors. He recognized that social relations within the University would have to be reordered if museums were to fulfil their epistemic functions. In this respect Goethe was on the side of the modern museum and opposed to the world of the private collection and all its idiosyncrasies. However, his own collections had very private and personal purposes. Using some of the ideas of Walter Benjamin as a foil, this paper tries to uncover some of the private passions that fuelled Goethe's almost insatiable collecting. Though these passions were peculiar to Goethe, I argue that historians of science should attend more to the passions and their place in the sciences.

This paper uses the work of John Richardson, an eighteenth-century brewing theorist, to explore the view that physical quantities, though they appear ‘natural’ or ‘given’, are actually contingent entities constructed to serve particular aims. It focuses on the pounds-per-barrel extract, a brewery-specific quantity which, in a reversal of the familiar position, seems self-evidently constructed to the general reader yet came to be accepted as ‘natural’ among its users. Central to Richardson's work in achieving this acceptance was an instrument, the saccharometer, which, by providing measurements of the quantity, legitimated it. Richardson presented both instrument and quantity as tailored to serving the particular needs of his fellow brewers, at the same time emphasizing their separateness from parallel work in distillery assessment, which had made Richardson's innovation possible but now threatened his projected consensus. Richardson's overall project encompassed the direct proportionation of material costs, retail prices and Excise duties to extract values as defined by the saccharometer, which he sought to monopolize. The scheme was not wholly successful, yet Richardson's quantity remained in brewery use into modern times. The end result, I contend, shows how a quantity, by becoming naturalized, may survive the loss of its initial theoretical underpinning.

Argument

Focus of this paper is on the historiographical fate of Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in Nazi Germany. Both played interesting roles in Nazi propaganda and the legitimization of Nazi political goals. In the “Third Reich,” efforts to claim Copernicus as a German astronomer were closely linked to revisionist policies in Eastern Europe culminating in the war-time expansion. The example of Galileo’s condemnation by the Catholic Church in 1633 became a symbol of its unjustified opposition to new “scientific” results, namely Nazi racial theory. After Catholic opposition against Nazi racial theory had reached a peak in 1937, the Galileo affair was turned into an instrument of Nazi propaganda against the Catholic Church.

Auch der Historiker steht in der Zeit, nicht über ihr.

Das Ewigkeitspostament hat er verloren.

Siegfried Giedion

Argument

Historians have accorded a privileged status to the analytic ideal of elements as a distinctive marker of “modern” chemistry. Boyle’s and Lavoisier’s have been used to characterize their modernity, which has in turn justified their status as the founding fathers of modern chemistry. It has been difficult, however, to establish a viable connection between these two fathers or the genealogy of their definitions. I argue in this paper that French didactic tradition gave rise to the definition Boyle stated in the Sceptical Chymist, or the analytic/philosophical ideal of elements. He did not endorse the definition he gave, but criticized its lack of analytic rigor and philosophical sophistication. His critique served as a negative heuristic, leading to Nicolas Lemery’s analytic ideal of “chemical principles” as distinct from “natural principles.” Lemery’s definition survived in French didactic tradition, as is evidenced in Macquer’s and Guyton’s textbooks which provided direct precedents for Lavoisier’s analytic ideal of “elements or principles.”

Argument

Studies of Helmholtz’s popular lectures on science have concentrated on reconstructing his vision of the scientific enterprise, of its nature, its benefits, and its “civilizing power.” This paper offers a different perspective by focusing on Helmholtz’s attempts to expose his own scientific work to a wider public. Drawing on recent discussions about how to study science popularization, it analyzes how he made his work on sensory physiology accessible to various audiences. It is argued that the exposition of the theory of vision comprises a complex, multilayered transformation of epistemic messages, which includes the recasting of arguments, recontextualizations, shifting emphasis, and significant changes in style. The popular writings on vision were directed to several different audiences, and, as such, manifest a delicate balance between conflicting agendas. An analysis of the texts indicates that neither the traditional two-step model of science popularization nor the more recent attempt to regard popularization as an “expository continuum” provides appropriate historiographical frameworks to study the popularization of scientific knowledge.

The National Institute of Science and the Arts, founded in 1795, consists of parallel academies, concerned with science, literature, the visual arts and so on. In the nineteenth century it represented a unique government-sponsored intellectual authority and a supreme court judgement, a power which came to be resented by innovators of all kinds. The Académie des sciences held a virtual monopoly in representing French science but soon this came to be challenged. In the period of the Second Empire (1852–70) we find a group of men carving out a new career for themselves as professional popularizers of science, commissioned to write regular articles in newspapers and journals. Although they had begun by simply reporting the meetings of the Académie des sciences, they soon widened their scope and even began criticizing the august Académie. Thus they represented the alternative voice of science, distinct from ‘official science’. These independent writers had their counterpart in painting and literature, both of which were developing radical new approaches in mid-century. When the very traditional Fine Art Academy refused to consider their paintings, painters like Cézanne and Manet found an alternative outlet. Writers too asserted their independence from the Académie française. There were not only many parallels between the independent practitioners in science, painting and literature but also new schools of ‘naturalism’ in painting and literature which looked to science as a model.