What does it mean to write the history of science and the ‘big picture’? In this introduction, I argue that ‘scale’ is a crucial but relatively underutilized concept for addressing this question. Rather than taking ‘big’ as a transparent category, I develop a detailed theoretical account of scale in the history and historiography of science. Following work in political geography, I argue that there is a ‘politics of scale’, one that the sciences have played a key role in shaping. Following work in the philosophy of history, I argue that scale should be thought of in its temporal dimension as well as its more traditional spatial dimension. And following work in cultural anthropology, I argue that scale should be understood as an actor's category just as much as an analytic category. The sciences, it turns out, have been one of the principal means through which scale is made and contested. More broadly, this volume of BJHS Themes encourages a creative and open-ended approach to scale in the history of science.

This conversation article brings together six of the original contributors to the 1993 Getting the Big Picture special issue of the British Journal for the History of Science. The contributors introduce their personal memories of the 1991 conference panel which formed the basis of that special issue. They also discuss the wider intellectual, institutional and political contexts of writing the history of science during the 1980s and 1990s, before concluding with reflections on the future of the discipline. The conversation was held live online via Microsoft Teams in March 2023. A professional transcript was produced by Sarah King. The transcript was then edited by James Poskett for length and clarity, before final edits were made by the contributors.

What is the history of science? How has it changed over the course of the twentieth century? And what does the future hold for the discipline? This ‘Retrospect’ provides an introduction to the historiography of science as it developed in the Anglophone world. It begins with the foundation of the Cambridge History of Science Committee in the 1940s and ends with the growth of cultural history in the 2000s. At the broadest level, it emphasizes the need to consider the close relationship between history and the history of science. All too often the historiography of science is treated separately from history at large. But as this essay shows, these seemingly distinct fields often developed in relation to one another. This essay also reveals the ways in which Cold War politics shaped the history of science as a discipline. It then concludes by considering the future, suggesting that the history of science and the history of political thought would benefit from greater engagement with one another.

Like many nineteenth-century sciences, phrenology had global aspirations. Skulls were collected in Egypt and Ceylon, societies exchanged journals between India and the United States, and phrenological bestsellers were sold in Shanghai and Tokyo. Despite this wealth of interaction, existing accounts treat phrenology within neat national and urban settings. In contrast, this article examines phrenology as a global political project. During an age in which character dominated public discourse, phrenology emerged as a powerful political language. In this article, I examine the role that correspondence played in establishing material connections between phrenologists and their political concerns, ranging from the abolition of slavery to the reform of prison discipline. Two overarching arguments run throughout my case-studies. First, phrenologists used correspondence to establish reform as a global project. Second, phrenology allowed reformers to present their arguments in terms of a new understanding of human character. More broadly, this article connects political thought with the global history of science.

The forgotten dream proved central to the early development of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic technique in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). However, little attention has been paid to the shifting uses of forgotten dreams within psychotherapeutic practice over the course of the twentieth century. This paper argues that post-war psychotherapists in London, both Jungian and Freudian, developed a range of subtly different approaches to dealing with their patients’ forgotten dreams. Theoretical commitments and institutional cultures shaped the work of practitioners including Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, and Edward Griffith. By drawing on diaries and case notes, this paper also identifies the active role played by patients in negotiating the mechanics of therapy, and the appropriate response to a forgotten dream. This suggests a broader need for a detailed social history of post-Freudian psychotherapeutic technique, one that recognises the demands of both patients and practitioners.

Logbooks and sea charts may appear rather straightforward evidence to present at a naval court martial. However, their introduction into proceedings in the early nineteenth century reveals an important shift. Measuring the depth of water soon became a problem both of navigation and of discipline. Indeed, Captain Newcomb's knowledge of the soundings taken at the Battle of the Basque Roads proved crucial at Lord Gambier's court martial in June 1809. Through a case study of Edward Massey's sounding machine, this paper reveals the close connection between disciplinary practices on land and at sea. The Board of Longitude acted as a key intermediary in this respect. By studying land and sea together, this paper better explains the changing make-up of the British scientific instrument trade in this period. Massey is just one example of a range of new entrants, many of whom had little previous experience of the maritime world. More broadly, this paper emphasizes the role of both environmental history and material culture in the study of scientific instruments.