Shaping Scientific Instrument Collections: a Historiography

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by National Museums Scotland Research Repository Alberti, S J M M (2018) Shaping scientific instrument collections: A historiography. Journal of the History of Collections (fhy046). ISSN 1477-8564 https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhy 046 Deposited on: 09 December 2019 NMS Repository – Research publications by staff of the National Museums Scotland http://repository.nms.ac.uk/ Journal of the History of Collections vol. 31 no. 3 (2019) pp. 445–452 Shaping scientific instrument collections A historiography Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 Samuel J.M.M. Alberti Many histories of scientific instruments concentrate on their manufacture and original function, but such artefacts as survive often do so in collections – many will have spent far longer in a museum than anywhere else. Alongside the rich literature on the history of scientific instruments, accordingly, there is a body of work on the histories of scientific instrument collections. This survey outlines genres and themes in the historiography of scientific instruments, focusing in particular on display and other collection-based functions. Fluid and contingent, collections are instrumental in the history, heritage, and historiography of science. THERE is an extensive literature on the history of what culture of science, from buildings to herbarium sheets. we now term scientific instruments. As a result, we Neither will the literatures on specific categories of know a great deal about how devices such as telescopes, instruments be addressed in detail, rather I follow the clocks and astrolabes were made and used, especially flow of those who reflect on scientific instruments more those dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth broadly.2 Finally, it is important to acknowledge my centuries. Many of these artefacts survive to be stud- own (unforgivable) Anglophone bias.3 ied and written about because they have been gathered These parameters guide the stream of focus towards into collections, often in museums. This special issue particular genres that characterize instrument studies. of Journal of the History of Collections reflects upon There are of course the usual monographs, specialist the meanings and values of such collections; by way of journals and stand-alone articles of any historical en- introduction, here I lay out the genres and themes in terprise.4 There are also chunky single-volume sur- the historiography of scientific instruments. veys that formed the backbone of this literature for As a suggested framework for historians of science many years and remain on the shelves and in the and of collections I cover some of the fruitful topics footnotes of instrument scholars.5 Historiographical in the history of scientific instruments as I see them – insights may also be gained from catalogues of collec- defining, making, and using – before delving more tions and specific exhibitions, as I will discuss below. closely into the scholarship that explicitly addresses They sit alongside more exhaustive compendia that their museological value. I address how historians cut across institutions: encyclopaedias and national- have written about collecting scientific instruments scale inventories provide insights into the parameters and their functions within collections, especially (but and methods of instrument scholarship up to the not exclusively) display. My intention is to set the fol- point of their publication.6 Furthermore, instrument lowing papers into their historiographical setting and scholars are a gregarious bunch, fond of edited collec- their museological context. tions,7 and special issues of journals.8 By concentrating on the confluence of museum his- My aim here is not to summarize these genres in tory and instrument studies there are of course rele- turn nor to address them as chronological waves – they vant strands of scholarship that will not be addressed are in any case for the most part contemporaneous – in detail here. There are related literatures that do not but rather to seek out the currents that flow across and fall within the present scope: on science museums as between them. References will for the most part pro- institutions (rather than specifically instruments within vide one or two examples of the topics in question; to- them) and on medical instruments.1 And as Liba Taub gether they provide insights on how instruments were articulates in this issue, scientific instruments, however defined, made, and used; and how instrumentcollec - defined, are but one sub-set of the broader material tions were gathered, deployed, and exhibited. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/jhc/fhy046 Advance Access publication 29 November 2018 SAMUEL J.M.M. ALBERTI Making and using for measurement, education and demonstration; sci- Defining one’s object of study would usually come first entists are by no means the only users of ‘scientific’ 13 and foremost; all categories of historical study are his- instruments. Investigating their uses leads us to the torically contingent of course, but the problem of def- historical exploration of the different groups who Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 inition for scientific instruments is particularly acute, used them, from savants to surveyors, and then the given that they have only been known as such since values and meanings placed upon the instruments – the mid-nineteenth century. The category then had which of course helps to explain why some survived 14 to be retrofitted, mostly around mathematical, optical in collections and others did not. and philosophical instruments (those that measured, Other historians of science since the 1980s have viewed and experimented respectively). While any of also turned their attention to instruments, as mani- the synthetic works in the genres mentioned above festations of scientific theory and of scientific prac- 15 must out of necessity define the scope of their study, tice. Contextualist historians of science from the D. J. Warner and J. V. Field in particular have help- 1990s found materials and tools to be useful conduits 16 fully historicized these definitions and alerted us to between the practice and cultures of science. A par- anachronism.9 Scientific instrument specialists have ticular/peculiar intersection between instrument defined their object of study as part of their profes- aficionados working in museums and universities are sional identity, variously privileging different chrono- those who have recreated instrumentation and experi- logical eras and scientific areas, as I show in my article mentation to understand the scientific enterprise, an in this issue. Throughout there has been a clear link endeavour which demands close study of the original 17 to museum practice, as I argue below: collectors and tools. Generally, however, although other historians curators define their collections, and the instruments of science have paid some attention to instruments, that survive in collections then skew definition away there has been little close study of them as artefacts; from those no longer with us. our understanding of the materiality of instruments However they are defined, a powerful tide pre- has come from the contributors to the specialist gen- 18 sent throughout instrument scholarship looks not res mentioned above. to instruments as products but rather to their making as process, and especially their makers. Two of the founding figures of post-war instrument history, Collecting and collections Maurice Daumas at the Conservatoire National des Our interest in this issue is in the history of a particu- Arts et Métiers in Paris and the British historian of lar set of uses to which instruments are put when they geography E.G.R. Taylor, both paid attention to the are associated with museums and collections. The manufacturing context of mathematical and other remainder of this introductory survey will therefore instruments – the workshops, industries and econom- be devoted not so much to the overlap (or gap) between ics.10 Taylor in particular employed a bio-bibliograph- instrument studies and (other) history of science, but ical approach that generations of instrument scholars to the historiographical pool where museum studies refined, enhanced and expanded over the following meets instrument scholarship. It is here that we find decades: from the 1960s through the 2000s, detailed the answers to the questions that Taub poses later in studies of instrument making in particular national this issue: ‘Why and how were scientific instruments contexts are evident, including the United States and collected? Once in collections, how were they used? the British Isles.11 This theme also runs through many How are the uses of instrument collections in histor- of the collaborative publications in this field.12 ical scholarship and in heritage institutions related?’ Alongside the attention to makers was a broader This mode of study has a long precedent. E.G.R. interest in the instruments’ uses. Specialist scholars Taylor wrote about the working ‘outfits’ of mathem- have studied the original instruments alongside con- atical practitioners.19 A. J. Turner, a stalwart of instru- temporary texts to understand their precise technical ment history, has always

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