DOCSLIB.ORG

Changing Science for the Time

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Changing Science for the Time _NA_~____ vo_L_.3~12~~~~NO~~~_ER __ l9M_______________________ AUTUMNBCXJKS-----------------------------------------z_zt emerges as a cosmopolitan liberal, scarcely contemporary political events. Science, for Changing science for religious, a friend of erstwhile Jacobins all the propaganda, did not (indeed does (who attended his wedding) and champion not) inhabit a world of supralunary purity. the time of working-class education - aspects at In Lamarck, L.J. Jordanova presents a Adrian Desmond odds with the prevailing caricature. In a corroborative view. Lamarck's debt to the scintillating discussion of Cuvier's "cata­ anti-authoritarian ideologues, disliked by Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and strophist" Discours (1812), Outram asserts Napoleon, counted against him during the Authority in Post-Revolutionary France. that - far from Scriptural kow-towing - Empire, when the re-establishment of order became imperative. Jordanova has By Dorinda Outram. Cuvier's abandonment of theological brought together the latest research on Manchester University Press: 1984. Pp. dogma led him to de-emphasize "causes" Lamarck, shaping it into the Oxford Past 299. £25, $32.50. and endorse a historical descriptive Masters format. She depicts the late Lamarck. approach. He demanded the "epistemo­ By L.J. Jordanova. logical autonomy" of geology, staked its Oxford University Press: 1984. Pp. 118. claim to the ''new worlds of time'' and, in Hbk £7.95; pbk £1.95. an effort to conquer Lamarck's rival empire of conchology, founded the speciality of palaeontology, modelled after CUVIER'S aggrandisements have become a the new historical criticism. Outram's historiographic byword. The creator of method is beguiling, and her imperial stratigraphic palaeontology was also metaphors capture an expansionist era. Napoleon's Inspector-General of Studies, This is a history of campaigns against Councillor of State from 1816 until his competitors and annexations of nature: death in 1832, and Grand-Master of the Cuvier's hostility towards Lamarck is a Protestant Faculties. Darwinian "territorial conflict" for control of the propagandists derided him as a bureaucrat invertebrates. Patronage, property and c and bibliolater. Cuvier might have power are the rewards for a successful play­ j founded what Camille Limoges calls the off between social contingencies and 8 "Macedonian Empire" of comparative natural resources. anatomy, but he is still ritually censured in For Outram, science is a "cultural popular histories for leading the state commodity"; careers do not happen, they opposition to Lamarck. Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829): legacy was are made - hence her approach to not transformism, but taxonomy. Dorinda Outram's Georges Cuvier, a Cuvier's rise, both in the Museum deeply-reasoned attack on such rubber­ d'Histoire Naturelle and Conseil d'Etat. Enlightenment ideologues promoting a stamp historiography, is a towering She constantly questions the "heroic" view rational science of man and redirecting achievement in the "naturalization" of of affairs and shows that "disinterested" naturalists to the influence of science history. Provocative, occasionally science is itself a myth of the scientific elite: environment. Lamarck's environ­ a self-validating argument that requires a mentalism, classificatory precision and constant sanitization of history. That myth attitude to transformed man are evidence was even more essential in Cuvier's day. of this debt. Given the uncertainties after the Terror But the enigma remains: Jordanova's ( 1793-1794), proclaiming a neutral ground Lamarck comes across as a minor noble­ could gain a savant immunity: "Whoever man in favour of the Revolution, a controlled the public exposition of such Heraclitean figure capable of majestic bio­ myths" of a politically-untainted science, logical visions, who remained at heart a she says, "was in a position to gain great sea-shell systematist. His legacy to the public authority". The struggle to control following generation was not trans­ the language of science climaxed during the formism, but taxonomy: even English 1830 Revolution, when Geoffroy chal­ evangelicals, who execrated his ungodly lenged Cuvier's asocial ethos and used flights, paid homage to his conchological "popularist rhetoric" to drum up radical classification. support for his romantic morphology Lamarck is an admirable primer, and based on unity of plan. Jordanova's strength comes from her With patronage networks ramifying emphasis on the continuity between through the political, banking and Lamarck's transformism and earlier Georges Cuvier (1769-1832): play-off between science and political expediency. scientific worlds, one can see why Cuvier theories of life and classification. Lamarck was forced to tailor his scientific claims to the ancien regime rationalist, old­ conjectural, it is always absorbing. Outram political expediences; society was volatile fashioned chemist and obsessive meteo­ has colonized terrain between cognitive and his power-base unstable. He had to rologist became Lamarck the transformist sociology and psychology, dissecting the renegotiate claims with successive masters shortly after the Terror. He died a blind complex relationship between the indi­ during the Revolution, Empire and Restor­ pauper in 1829, and was interred by Cuvier vidual, state and science that was forged ation, which entailed subtle modifications with a derogatory eloge. Cuvierian during the French Revolution. This is not a of his scientific stance. Outram reveals officialdom could certainly be heavy study of Cuvier's comparative anatomy, how, in turn, he met the challenge of handed. But now Outram has taken us but of his public persona as a savant- not revolutionary democratization, capitalized behind the politicking which made it so the textbook history of transcendent on the colonial predations of the essential in a turbulent age. 0 genius, but a living biography of a man revolutionary army, combatted forming alliances and entering into Napoleonic "egoism", and retained power Adrian Desmond is an Honorary Research "micropolitical" negotiations to advance during the reaction, in part by modifying Fellow in the Department of Zoology and his career. the rhetoric and content of his geology and Comparative Anatomy, University College The ossified image of Cuvier is that of London, and author of Archetypes and zoology. In short, she has made splendid Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London the stern "legislator of science", arrogant, play of the mediating structures between 1850-1875 (Blond & Briggs, 1982/University of unyielding and conservative. Here he the public language of science and Chicago Press, 1984). © 1984 Nature Publishing Group.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Linnaeus at Home
    NATURE-BASED ACTIVITIES FOR PARENTS LINNAEUS 1 AT HOME A GuiDE TO EXPLORING NATURE WITH CHILDREN Acknowledgements Written by Joe Burton Inspired by Carl Linnaeus With thanks to editors and reviewers: LINNAEUS Lyn Baber, Melissa Balzano, Jane Banham, Sarah Black, Isabelle Charmantier, Mark Chase, Maarten Christenhusz, Alex Davey, Gareth Dauley, AT HOME Zia Forrai, Jon Hale, Simon Hiscock, Alice ter Meulen, Lynn Parker, Elizabeth Rollinson, James Rosindell, Daryl Stenvoll-Wells, Ross Ziegelmeier Share your explorations @LinneanLearning #LinnaeusAtHome Facing page: Carl Linnaeus paper doll, illustrated in 1953. © Linnean Society of London 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system or trasmitted in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the copyright owner. www.linnean.org/learning “If you do not know Introduction the names of things, the knowledge of them is Who was Carl Linnaeus? Contents Pitfall traps 5 lost too” Carl Linnaeus was one of the most influential scientists in the world, - Carl Linnaeus A bust of ‘The Young Linnaeus’ by but you might not know a lot about him. Thanks to Linnaeus, we Bug hunting 9 Anthony Smith (2007). have a naming system for all species so that we can understand how different species are related and can start to learn about the origins Plant hunting 13 of life on Earth. Pond dipping 17 As a young man, Linnaeus would study the animals, plants, Bird feeders 21 minerals and habitats around him. By watching the natural world, he began to understand that all living things are adapted to their Squirrel feeders 25 environments and that they can be grouped together by their characteristics (like animals with backbones, or plants that produce Friendly spaces 29 spores).
    [Show full text]
  • “The Infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, Infinite in Duration As Well As Exten- Sion, in Which Eternal Matter in Accordanc
    “The infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as Exten- sion, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those — all the others the departed God took with him... The Divine Artifex had therefore less and less to do in the world. He did not even have to con- serve it, as the world, more and more, became able to dispense with this service...” ALEXANDRE KOYRE, “From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe”, 1957 into the big world -26- “La raison pour laquelle la relocalisation du global est devenue si importante est que le Terre elle-même pourrait bien ne pas être un globe après tout (...). Même la fameuse vision de la “planète bleue” pour- rait se révéler comme une image composite, c’est à dire une image composée de l’ancienne forme donnée au Dieu chrétien et du réseau complexe d’acquisitions de données de la NASA, à son tour projeté à l’intérieur du panorama diffracté des médias. Voilà peut-être la source de la fascination que l’image de la sphère a exercé depuis: la forme sphérique arrondit la con- naissance en un volume continu, complet, transparent, omniprésent qui masque la tâche extraordinairement difficile d’assembler les points de données venant de tous les instruments et de toutes les disciplines. Une sphère n’a pas d’histoire, pas de commencement, pas de fin, pas de trou, pas de discontinuité d’aucune sorte.” BRUNO LATOUR, “l’Anthropocène et la Destruction de l’Image
    [Show full text]
  • <Tollege Lll!Leehlr
    ,. <tollege lll!leehlr VOL .- II. Haverford, Pa., April 4, 1910 N0.8 WEST FBILA. o: BAVER­ OUTSIDE PRACTICE BEGUN. i LECTURE NUIIIBER 1. FORD o. HAVERFORD ABROAD. L~sTEa, '96, AXD Htxc nMAXX, '00, lx H1 WAK>I W s F1ksT Aooa~ss Da. H AHRis l. ~ATJU! a SATUau.n ..... H ..: LP wrru CoACIIIXG. ri'AI. KS ON Hts NEWI,\' Dts- MAKKS SLOw Soc c ~Jt GA>t~. " I hnd ruther mukc 11 clcuu cut N>:rrJJ>:a T>:AM Ut• TO "l'hc tcnm which will go to Eng- CO\'ERt:o ]:tsAl.T•:a. I to the ropes thun knock nil the STAXDAIIO. i luild this summer is much better \\' I k ,-._-- .._ f tl home-runs in history !" I I I 1cn us et uy u mcmucr o tc , , . M._ i L'qUippcd for bowlers uru Ills u mulicncc nt his lecture lust 'l'hurs- 1 h_rs rcmurk \\"tcs oncv. "'lie heat Saturday m~dc to ufternoon 1hi g her clu>s of fi_ elder.,_ though · t I f tl 111e, JUst before un insrgmficant ma(lc... tile g c1 1t y mg1 1 w 1crc tc ouru 1c umc with West J>hilu- some".·lmt ·we11kcr 1 1 1 . 111 b11tbng t "'.n , · . f . tl . ll ut t.ch, by 1.1 gentleman not too lllUIHUiCflJ> 1 0 1liS TC<'CII .V l 1ISCO\'• 1 . • dclphill rnthor slow and with most the first teum lllllt went m·er m crc'<l Christian P snlter, J . lh•ndul you11g, of lute Homan urcln.tcc- of the team resting at times 11-196," was the t~nswcr of .J.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Phd Position Muséum National D'histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
    Open PhD Position Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France Area of research: Palaeontology and Molecular systematics of Cenozoic and Recent molluscs, Gastropoda PhD Title: Timing of diversification of the Bursidae (Gastropoda: Tonnoidea) Supervisors: Dr. Didier MERLE, Dr. Michel LAURIN & Dr. Nicolas PUILLANDRE E-mails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Host laboratory: CR2P CNRS-MNHN-UPMC, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France. Associated Research units: 1°) CR2P, CNRS-MNHN-UPMC, Centre de recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements – Equipes 1 « Paléoécosystèmes : analyse, compréhension, évolution » and 2 « Diversification des Métazoaires » 2°) ISyEB Institute CNRS MNHN UPMC EPHE (Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité), UMR 7205, Equipe 3E « Exploration, Espèce, Evolution » Subject: State of the art: Time-calibrated phylogenetic trees are increasingly used in biology, in particular to highlight evolutionary radiations or biological crises, to establish a correlation between speciation and extinction rates and environmental changes or to compare diversification rates between clades. Also, modern comparative methods for establishing correlations between characters generally require trees with estimated branch lengths. For a long time, the dating of the tree of the life was based solely on the fossil record. During the last decades, the fast progress in molecular phylogenetics allowed inference of divergence times, but paleontological data have been under-exploited for this purpose, with few (mostly minimal) paleontological are constraints used in each study.. Both communities (paleontologists and molecularists) gain to work together on this theme, because fossils are not available for each node of the tree and because molecular phylogenetics still relies mostly on fossils to calibrate their trees.
    [Show full text]
  • ZOOLOGY Exploring the Biodiversity of Colorado and Theworld
    CHAPTER 4 — ZOOLOGY Exploring the Biodiversity of Colorado and the World CHAPTER 4 ZOOLOGY Exploring the Biodiversity of Colorado and the World Jeffrey T. Stephenson, Before the Museum Paula E. Cushing, The first collections of specimens that make up what is now the Denver John R. Demboski, and Museum of Nature & Science were actually established well before the Frank-T. Krell founding of the institution in 1900, the selection of a board of trustees, or the construction of a building to house and exhibit the specimens. Edwin Carter (1830–1900) (Fig. 4.1) collected Colorado birds and mammals from the 1860s through the 1890s. Born in New York in 1830, Carter arrived in Colorado in 1859 hoping to make it rich in the goldfields, but he soon became interested in the region’s natural history. He learned hide tanning and, as his prospects for hitting the mother lode faded, he earned his living selling buckskin clothing that he handcrafted. Carter supplemented these earnings by mar- keting foodstuffs and other provisions to the growing population of successful and (mostly) unsuccessful prospectors flooding the region. His interest in nature turned to concern as he observed dwindling numbers of mammals and birds, owing largely to habitat destruction and overhunting. Period photographs of the area’s mining district show a landscape largely denuded of vegetation. By the 1870s, Carter noted that many animal species were becoming scarce. The state’s forests were being devastated, ranches and farms were replacing open prairie, and some species, including the last native bison in Colorado, were on the verge of extirpation or extinction.
    [Show full text]
  • Race and Genealogy
    Race and Genealogy. Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of “ Race ” Claude-Olivier Doron To cite this version: Claude-Olivier Doron. Race and Genealogy. Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of “Race”. Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2012, 22, pp.75 - 109. halshs-01508913 HAL Id: halshs-01508913 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01508913 Submitted on 14 Apr 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Race and Genealogy: Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of “Race” Claude-Olivier Doron * [email protected] ABSTRACT This article analyses the conditions of formation of the concept of “race” in natural history in the middle of the eighteenth century. Relying on the method of historical epistemology to avoid some of the aporias raised by the traditional historiography of “racism”, it focuses on the peculiarities of the concept of “race” in contrast to other similar concepts such as “variety”, “species” and tries to answer the following questions: to what extent the concept of “race” was integrated in natural history’s discourses before the middle of the eighteenth century? To which kind of concepts and problems was it linked and to which style of reasoning did it pertain? To which conditions could it enter natural history and develop in it? The article argues that “race” pertained to a genealogical style of reasoning which was largely extraneous to natural history before the middle of the eighteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Specimen Transport in the Eighteenth-Century French and British Atlantics
    Ecosystems under Sail Specimen Transport in the Eighteenth-Century French and British Atlantics CHRISTOPHER M. PARSONS McNeil Center for Early American Studies and KATHLEEN S. MURPHY California Polytechnic State University abstract The ocean was frequently as hostile an environment for plants and animals as it was for humankind in the eighteenth century. Existing methods of preserving the plants, fish, birds, and land animals that provided the raw materials for European science increasingly proved insufficient for the often long voyages that brought them from colonial and indigenous collectors; specimens arrived dead when they were needed alive, rotten and damaged when they were needed whole, and they fre- quently suffered as they encountered negligent and uninterested sailors, and rats and other shipboard pests that showed too much interest. This paper examines strategies of specimen transport adopted by French and British naturalists in the Atlantic world during the first half of the eigh- teenth century, arguing for the importance of maritime spaces that have often been overlooked in histories of the expanding reach of European science. Atlantic networks of specimen transport were simultaneously dis- tinctly national and endlessly entangled. Efforts to discipline maritime social environments diverged along distinctly national lines, influenced by larger patterns of scientific sociability in both Britain and France. At the same time, however, naturalists drew on a cadre of common practices when they packed and preserved specimens for transport. The study of specimen transport demonstrates the geographic expanse of the centripetal and centrifugal tendencies at work more generally in eighteenth-century science; these forces simultaneously strengthened national scientific cul- tures and supported a cosmopolitan network of naturalists who communi- cated specimens and the methods for making them throughout Europe and the wider world.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sydney Ornithological Fraternity, 1930S-1950: Anecdotes of an Admirer Allen Keast Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada
    The Sydney ornithological fraternity, 1930s-1950: anecdotes of an admirer Allen Keast Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada (Allen Keast, now Professor emeritus from Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, is an internationally recognized ornithologist. An early part of his experience was as a member of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. It is fitting that this oral history of his early years is published in the Society's journal. Ed.) The centre of Sydney ornithology 50 years discussions of bird observations, joint trips Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/australian-zoologist/article-pdf/30/1/26/1475436/az_1995_003.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 ago was the Ornithological section of the would be planned: the talk would be about birds Royal Zoological Society that met monthly and nothing else. The Sydney ornithological (originally on Friday, then Thursday, nights) fraternity was smaller 50 years ago, the city jointly with the New South Wales Section of was compact and travel around it easier; inter- the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union. changes of home visits were frequent. The meeting place was the 6th floor of Bull's Chambers, 28 Martin Place. We were the most My ornithological career was to be inspired active of the half a dozen Sections, that and shaped by this late 1930s-1940s ornitho- included Aviculture, Conchology, Entomology, logical fraternity. Knowledge was freely etc. The meeting room was graced by a dispensed and I absorbed it all. Keith magnificent set of Neville Cayley paintings: Hindwood's city office was always available for these are now housed at Taronga Zoo.
    [Show full text]
  • Evidence for Evolution
    Developing a Theory to Explain Change Scientific evidence to support the Theory of Evolution QuestionsQuestions toto Ponder?Ponder? Can you compare different explanations for changes in populations over time? Can you describe the evidence to support the theory of evolution? Can you explain how scientific knowledge is accumulated and organized to develop theories? Can you analyze data to determine relatedness among organisms? ¾ Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) believed that all life existed in a perfected and unchanging form ¾ Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle ¾George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon challenged this idea. In 1749, he published a 44-volume Histoire Naturelle. ¾In this publication, he noted similarities between humans and apes. Speculated that we may have a common ancestor ¾Also said that earth was older than 6000 years (at the time that was considered the age of earth) ¾ Cuvier’s Fossils: ¾ George Cuvier is credited for developing the science of Paleontology ¾ Examined rocks and noticed that each stratum (layer of rock) was characterized by a unique group of fossil species ¾ He noticed that species would be in one strata and then disappear in the next- ¾ Proposed idea of extinction- organisms alive after the catastrophe would populate the world (Revolutions) ¾ Time and Nature act to destroy species – not create them! ¾ Lyell’s Principles of Geology ¾ Didn’t like idea of revolutions ¾ Reasoned that geological changes are slow and continuous ¾ If Earth is changing, could slow, subtle changes also occur in populations? ¾ Lamarck: Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics ¾Proposed that species evolve by acquiring characteristics of their parents and thus increased in complexity over time until they were perfect (for their niche) ¾ Lamarck: Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics ¾The Environment is the key factor in evolution (True) but the rest of the theory is wrong! ¾1.
    [Show full text]
  • Acarology, the Study of Ticks and Mites
    Acarology, the study of ticks and mites Ecophysiology, the study of the interrelationship between Actinobiology, the study of the effects of radiation upon an organism's physical functioning and its environment living organisms Edaphology, a branch of soil science that studies the Actinology, the study of the effect of light on chemicals influence of soil on life Aerobiology, a branch of biology that studies organic Electrophysiology, the study of the relationship between particles that are transported by the air electric phenomena and bodily processes Aerology, the study of the atmosphere Embryology, the study of embryos Aetiology, the medical study of the causation of disease Entomology, the study of insects Agrobiology, the study of plant nutrition and growth in Enzymology, the study of enzymes relation to soil Epidemiology, the study of the origin and spread of Agrology, the branch of soil science dealing with the diseases production of crops. Ethology, the study of animal behavior Agrostology, the study of grasses Exobiology, the study of life in outer space Algology, the study of algae Exogeology, the study of geology of celestial bodies Allergology, the study of the causes and treatment of Felinology, the study of cats allergies Fetology, the study of the fetus Andrology, the study of male health Formicology, the study of ants Anesthesiology, the study of anesthesia and anesthetics Gastrology or Gastroenterology, the study of the Angiology, the study of the anatomy of blood and lymph stomach and intestines vascular systems Gemology,
    [Show full text]
  • Dr. Florence Raulin-Cerceau Grande Galerie De 1'Evolution Museum National D'histoire Naturelle 36 - Rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire 75005 - Paris - France
    Dr. Florence Raulin-Cerceau Grande Galerie de 1'Evolution Museum national d'Histoire naturelle 36 - rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire 75005 - Paris - France "La Grande Galerie de 1"Evolution" of Paris: The only Museum in the world entirely devoted to biological evolution. The new building called "Grande Galerie de 1'Evolution" of the national Museum of natural History, in Paris-France, is the first museum in the world exclusively devoted to biological evolution. Inaugured in June 1994, this building was the result of a huge national project of renovation concerning few large french science museums. From a scientific popularization point of view, showing to public, in a museum, the processes and results of biological evolution was a sort of challenge. Our choice fell on few major topics: diversity of life, consequences of interaction between man and nature, and the main processes of biological evolution along the story of life. These topics are developed with the help of the presentation of many animal (or plant) specimens belonging to the Museum collections. The Museum is divided in 3 parts (named "Acts") : - The aim of Act 1 is to sensibilize the visitor to the results of 4 billions years of biological evolution. This act shows some examples of biological diversity through few terrestrial and marine environments (deserts, tropical forests, polar habitats, abyssal zones ...). - Act 2 is the principal part of the Museum explaining the main processes of evolution. This part shows also the story of life from the first living cells to man. - Act 3, the last part offers to visitors a vision of the interactions between man and nature, and of their consequences along millions of years.
    [Show full text]
  • PLINY the ELDER's NATURAL HISTORY: ENCYCLOPEDIA for CAROLINGIAN ASTRONOMY and COSMOLOGY Already Important to Bede (673–735)
    CHAPTER THREE PLINY THE ELDER’S NATURAL HISTORY: ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR CAROLINGIAN ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY Already important to Bede (673–735) while circulating in excerpts and partial copies during the early eighth century, Pliny’s Natural History (NH) was appreciated by Alcuin, Charlemagne, and their contempo- raries for supplying a tremendous increase in astronomical information. Analogously, of the earlier astronomical-cosmological works entitled De natura rerum (DNR) by Isidore of Seville (ca. 613) and Bede (ca. 701), it was Bede’s, which made more extensive and more explicit use of Pliny, that was clearly preferred in the Carolingian world. Pliny’s compendium of knowledge was a touchstone for authority in astronomy at the time of Charlemagne and afterwards and was used selectively, not slavishly, when its offerings provided what the moment required.1 While speci c, practical questions in astronomy often arose in the correspondence of Alcuin and others, the answers to those questions were sought less to build a body of technical knowledge than to con rm and recon rm the view that God’s cosmos displayed an order perceptible to human reason. Among the more effective ways developed by the Carolingians to af\ rm this view was the invention of diagrams that incorporated limited quantitative information but gave primary emphasis to qualita- tive patterns in an imagery of cosmic order. Plinian texts received such treatment early in the ninth century. 1 An introduction to Pliny’s astronomy appears in two essays in French and Greenaway, eds., Science in the Early Roman Empire; see Pedersen, “Some Astronomical Topics in Pliny,” pp.
    [Show full text]