JournalTOCs

HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology
Number of Followers: 9

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1646-7752
Published by Sciendo

[389 journals]

Book Review: Stephanie Joy Mawson. . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2023, 294 pp. ISBN: 978-1-501-77027-2
- PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
From to Latitude and Longitude: The Adjustment and Renewal of the
Positioning System in Chinese Local Gazetteers during Qing Dynasty
- Abstract: Influenced by a cosmological view of the interconnectedness between heaven and humankind, ancient Chinese astrologers developed the fenye (分野, “field allocation”) system. This theory envisioned correspondence between heaven and earth and was a prevalent regional positioning system in ancient China. However, during the Qianlong era (1736-1796), fenye theory faced skepticism and rejection from official quarters, leading to a significant crisis for this traditional positioning system. With the eastward spread of Western learning, modern European astronomical and geographical knowledge were introduced into China, and Chinese intellectuals began to favor the Western system of latitude and longitude for geographical positioning. In the late Qing period, the gradual popularization of the spherical Earth concept and the latitude and longitude system laid the theoretical foundation for establishing of this system. The public dissemination of latitude and longitude data measured by the imperial astronomical and calendrical institutions, along with mathematicians’ calculations based on historical data and the supplementary measurements conducted by local governments, provided data support for the system’s establishment. By the end of the Qing dynasty, as the knowledge structures and worldviews of Chinese intellectuals transformed, the traditional celestial-terrestrial correspondence in Chinese local gazetteers was phased out, giving way to the latitude and longitude system.
  PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
From the “dirty port” to the Disinfection Service of the Port of Rio
de Janeiro (1893-1911)
- Abstract: This article demonstrates how sanitation was one of the many issues that led to the heavy opposition to the operation of the Port of Rio de Janeiro, at the end of the nineteenth century. Aside from the historiographical framework that centers on the movement of people and objects through ports as a threat to public health at that time, the aim was to clarify how the port itself and its infrastructures were considered hazardous and unsanitary and how the sanitation defense procedures were found to be inadequate and ineffective. The evidence presented here points to the destruction-construction of the Port of Rio de Janeiro, in the early twentieth century, as a solution to radically transform its infrastructure. The port under construction was consonant with the full technical-technological implementation of the “disinfection” service, which both supported its new operation and helped solve the public health issues afflicting the city.
  PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
Book Review: Ignacio García-Pereda. . Lisboa: Caleidoscópio/Euronatura,
2022. 304 pp. ISBN: 9789896587642
- PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
An Encounter of Incommensurables: European Cosmological Knowledge in the
Chapters of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1660-1820)
- Abstract: It has often been argued that the introduction of early modern European cosmology at the turn of the seventeenth century by Jesuit missionaries—subsumed under the generic term “Western learning” (xixue 西學)—signalled the demise of traditional fenye (分野, or “field allocation”) theory, as the concept of Earth’s sphericity and the widened sense of world geography are fundamentally at odds with the Sinocentric worldview underpinning fenye. However, the fenye chapters in Qing dynasty local gazetteers tell a different story: in comparison with earlier Ming gazetteers their proportion increased. These chapters rarely take a stance against Western learning. Rather, they invoke Western learning as part and parcel of the imperially sanctioned astronomy to be reckoned with, or even suggest it as a remedy for flaws in traditional fenye techniques, leading to a plurality of discourses in which Sino-Western relationships become entangled with tension between the imperial and the local. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the peripheral regions of the empire, such as Guangxi, as these were traditionally marginalised in the Sinocentric cosmology of the fenye system. This paper explores cosmological discourses to answer the following questions: What were the agendas that Western learning was made to serve in these gazetteers' How did local endeavours relate to court-sponsored imperial projects' What were their sources of knowledge on matters of Western learning, and how can we map out the geography of Western learning based on these local sources'
  PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
Introduction: Empire under the Night Sky: Recording Astral-Cosmography in
Qing Dynasty China, 17th – 19th Centuries
- PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
by the Numbers: A Quantitative Analysis of Astrological Contents in
Chinese Local Gazetteers
- Abstract: Fenye (分野, lit., “field allocation”), is a traditional Chinese astrological system that associated celestial phenomena with regions on earth since ancient times. During middle and late imperial China, many literati writings criticized this system as illogical. Yet in the local gazetteers that were compiled in late imperial China to document local data within each administrative region, compilers continued to use fenye as the canonical way to identify their regions within the vast empire. The Jesuit introduction of Western sciences to China, in particular the technology that could precisely locate any place or region with latitude and longitude, appeared to render fenye obsolete, which fueled even more literati criticism. Modern scholars consider the public criticism from the Qianlong emperor and the resulting removal of fenye from the 1781 Rehe Gazetteer the end of fenye in imperial orthodoxy. However, by quantitatively analyzing a collection of 4,410 titles of local gazetteers and their section headings, this paper reveals many examples of local literati who resisted removing fenye entirely from their local history, well into the late Republican period.
  PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
Book Review: 司宏伟. 神机妙算会“银河”——中国第一台
巨型计算机“银河-I”的研制、创新、影响 [Si Hongwei. ].
Beijing: Chinese Industry and Information Technology Publishing Group,
Posts & Telecom Press, 2024, 240 pp. ISBN: 978-7-115-64353-7
- PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
From to : Applying Correlative Cosmography in Late Imperial China
- Abstract: This paper documents the resilience of fenye (分野, lit., “field allocation”) and its applications through the nineteenth century in China. Despite literati (and eventually imperial) criticisms that the fenye system of correlative cosmography was outdated and unworthy of belief, fenye retained a sizeable audience through the close of the Qing period. At the top, the Qing imperial state continued to reference fenye correlations in its official communications late into the dynasty. In local society, literati looked to newly issued dynastic sources of astrological knowledge to update local gazetteers; in the nineteenth century, these trends were pronounced along frontier areas lacking longstanding gazetteer records. Finally, people engaged in the practice of fengshui looked to fenye knowledge to update the values and layout of the compass, the historical origins of which related to geomantic practices. In the Qing period, the compass was both theoretically and physically altered under the influence of Jesuit-introduced “Western Learning” (Xixue 西學). The paper contends that the status of fenye in pre-twentieth century China was seldom an allor-nothing proposition between a celebrated component of imperial orthodoxy and an outdated relic in inexorable decline: people critiqued fenye, used fenye, and updated fenye.
  PubDate: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT
Introduction: Social History of Science and Historiography: Where are We
in Brazil'
- PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Book Review: Thomas Morel. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
292 pp. ISBN: 978-1009267304
- PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
André Rebouças Beyond the Atlantic: The Racism and Sociability Network
of a Black Nineteenth-Century Engineer
- Abstract: In this article, we analyse the intellectual trajectory of André Pinto Rebouças (1838-1898) between 1870 and 1888, and how he problematised the relation between education, technology, and social reform. Rebouças argued that access to land and technical education were the mechanisms of upward mobility for black people and European immigrants. He was an engineer, teacher, businessman, abolitionist, journalist, and man of science. His family, intellectual, and professional trajectory was permeated by an extensive sociability network and racial barriers, both within and outside Brazil. Rebouças was a spokesman for the social concerns of his time, particularly those which affected not only the productive sector, but the living conditions and survival of non-white people. The relevance of this work is to add reflections to the history of science and black intellectuals.
  PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Book Review: Martino Lorenzo Fagnani. . Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023,
277 pp. ISBN: 978-3-031-20656-6
- PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Landulfo Alves’ Trajectory as an Agronomist and Federal Intervener in
Bahia: State Investments in Agriculture and Education (1938-1942)
- Abstract: Landulfo Alves was an agronomist who was educated in the USA and became a politician, having served as federal intervener in Bahia from 1938 to 1942, in the context of the Estado Novo, and later as senator of the Republic from 1951 to 1954. His investments in agriculture and education left important legacies for scientific activities in Bahia. Despite these achievements, historians may not have fully grasped his importance in the development of Bahia, especially in science. Seeking to fill this void, this paper addresses questions which have received little exploration in historiography: how did his education motivate his initiation into the public sphere and influence his political choices' What were his investments in the state' Was he an isolated case, or was he in line with the development policies of his time' As a result, we hope that this work will provide new historiographical approaches to Landulfo Alves’ contributions to science and higher education in Bahia.
  PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Book Review: Karine Chemla and Glenn W. Most, eds. . Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2022, 464 pp. ISBN: 978-1-1088-3957-0
- PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
The Transformation of a Science by a “Technology”: The Case of
Astrophysics and the Introduction of Machine Learning
- Abstract: This article explores the transformations of an area of scientific research provoked by the introduction of big data and the possibilities to treat them by Artificial Intelligence. We study these transformations in contemporary astrophysics as it has developed over the last thirty years. These transformations extend from cognitive work procedures to information processing, systems of collaboration between scientists, epistemology and terrain of questions.
  PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
The History of New World Leishmaniases From a Brazilian Perspective
- Abstract: This article addresses the leishmaniases in the Americas from a Brazilian perspective. The first cases of cutaneous and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis were described in 1909 in São Paulo. Latin American researchers gained international projection because of their work on this disease they considered autochthonous, which came to be known as American tegumentary leishmaniasis. But visceral leishmaniasis only emerged as a public health problem in the Americas in 1934 thanks to a new diagnostic technique for yellow fever. Zoonoses earned greater attention later, especially in the laboratory founded in 1965 at the Evandro Chagas Institute by Ralph Lainson and Jeffrey Shaw. Here we examine their connections with other teams and the resulting changes when they proved that parasite, vector, and host populations were much more heterogeneous than previously imagined. Technical innovations provided a better understanding of the distinct epidemiological characteristics of the illnesses caused by different Leishmania amid a backdrop of far-reaching transnational networks.
  PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Circulating Silence. The Reaction to Rachel Carson’s Book (1962) in
Scandinavian Gardening Magazines
- Abstract: This article examines the reception of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in Scandinavian family gardening magazines. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, family gardening associations were broad organisations with significant social impact. They were the most important arenas for transfer of scientific knowledge and values on gardening, linking plant protection experts, producers and sellers of gardening chemicals, horticultural advisors and the general public. Thus, these associations and their magazines influenced many social groups that had common interests in non-commercial gardening as part of their everyday life. In practice, these family gardening magazines were heavily dependent on the income from garden chemicals advertisements. Consequently, their editorial policies and plant protection technical advice were deeply rooted in the post-war ideals of chemical agriculture and horticulture. These ideals were pursued and applied everywhere—even into the tiniest allotment and family garden. Scandinavian countries and their gardening associations have many similarities and some differences between them. This makes them an interesting case for comparison. The gardening magazines of Sweden, Norway and Denmark show quite a few similarities in the way they first pretended to ignore Carson while spending much effort countering the possible effects of her message, and in the way they retrospectively engaged with her book. There are, however, quite interesting differences in the way the national garden associations, their magazine editors and the magazines’ pesticide experts handled the publicity generated by Silent Spring on the harmfulness of garden chemicals.
  PubDate: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Editorial: Reflections on Last Triennium
- PubDate: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Under Shannon’s Bandwagon. Rethinking the Reception of Information
Theory in Thermal Physics, 1948-1957
- Abstract: In this paper I analyze the historical case of how Shannon’s theory of information, among other alternative theories, began to be applied rapidly and systematically within thermal physics in the 1950s. After evaluating this theory and the intellectual context in which it is inserted, I argue that it was not the formal-conceptual features of Shannon’s theory but the particular motivations of influential scientists such as von Neumann, Weaver and Wiener that properly made it possible for information science to become deeply rooted in thermal physics during the 1950s, as shown by the proposals of Brillouin and Jaynes.
  PubDate: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

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