Charles W. J. Withers

David N. Livingstone

In Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning, authority, and identity. Chapters from a distinguished range of contributors explore the places of creation, the paths of knowledge transmission and reception, and the import of exchange networks at various scales. Studies range from the inspection of the places of London science, which show how different scientific sites operated different moral and epistemic economies, to the scrutiny of the ways in which the museum space of the Smithsonian Institution and the expansive space of the American West produced science and framed geographical understanding. This volume makes clear that the science of this era varied in its constitution and reputation in relation to place and personnel, in its nature by virtue of its different epistemic practices, in its audiences, and in the ways in which it was put to work.

Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science

Ronald L. Numbers

Hugh Richard Slotten

This volume in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to exploring the history of modern science using national, transnational, and global frames of reference. Organized by topic and culture, its essays by distinguished scholars offer the most comprehensive and up-to-date nondisciplinary history of modern science currently available. Essays are grouped together in separate sections that represent larger regions: Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and Latin America. Each of these regional groupings ends with a separate essay reflecting on the analysis in the preceding chapters. Intended to provide a balanced and inclusive treatment of the modern world, contributors analyze the history of science not only in local, national, and regional contexts but also with respect to the circulation of knowledge, tools, methods, people, and artifacts across national borders.

The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 8, Modern Science in National, Transnational, and Global Context

A term with myriad associations, revolution is commonly understood in its intellectual, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. Until now, almost no attention has been paid to revolution and questions of geography. Geography and Revolution examines the ways that place and space matter in a variety of revolutionary situations. David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers assemble a set of essays that are themselves revolutionary in uncovering not only the geography of revolutions but the role of geography in revolutions. Here, scientific revolutions—Copernican, Newtonian, and Darwinian—ordinarily thought of as placeless, are revealed to be rooted in specific sites and spaces. Technical revolutions—the advent of print, time-keeping, and photography—emerge as inventions that transformed the world's order without homogenizing it. Political revolutions—in France, England, Germany, and the United States—are notable for their debates on the nature of political institutions and national identity. Gathering insight from geographers, historians, and historians of science, Geography and Revolution is an invitation to take the where as seriously as the who and the when in examining the nature, shape, and location of revolutions.

Geography and Revolution

Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the relationship between science and religion. The particulars of place—whether in Edinburgh, Belfast, Toronto, Princeton, or Columbia, South Carolina—shaped the response to Darwin’s theories. Were they tolerated, repudiated, or welcomed? Livingstone shows how Darwin was read in different ways, with meaning distilled from Darwin's texts depending on readers' own histories—their literary genealogies and cultural preoccupations. That the theory of evolution fared differently in different places, Livingstone writes, is "exactly what Darwin might have predicted. As the theory diffused, it diverged." Dealing with Darwin shows the profound extent to which theological debates about evolution were rooted in such matters as anxieties over control of education, the politics of race relations, the nature of local scientific traditions, and challenges to traditional cultural identity. In some settings, conciliation with the new theory, even endorsement, was possible—demonstrating that attending to the specific nature of individual communities subverts an inclination to assume a single relationship between science and religion in general, evolution and Christianity in particular. Livingstone concludes with contemporary examples to remind us that what scientists can say and what others can hear in different venues differ today just as much as they did in the past.

Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution

Dealing with Darwin

We are accustomed to thinking of science and its findings as universal. After all, one atom of carbon plus two of oxygen yields carbon dioxide in Amazonia as well as in Alaska; a scientist in Bombay can use the same materials and techniques to challenge the work of a scientist in New York; and of course the laws of gravity apply worldwide. Why, then, should the spaces where science is done matter at all? David N. Livingstone here puts that question to the test with his fascinating study of how science bears the marks of its place of production. Putting Science in Its Place establishes the fundamental importance of geography in both the generation and the consumption of scientific knowledge, using historical examples of the many places where science has been practiced. Livingstone first turns his attention to some of the specific sites where science has been made—the laboratory, museum, and botanical garden, to name some of the more conventional locales, but also places like the coffeehouse and cathedral, ship's deck and asylum, even the human body itself. In each case, he reveals just how the space of inquiry has conditioned the investigations carried out there. He then describes how, on a regional scale, provincial cultures have shaped scientific endeavor and how, in turn, scientific practices have been instrumental in forming local identities. Widening his inquiry, Livingstone points gently to the fundamental instability of scientific meaning, based on case studies of how scientific theories have been received in different locales. Putting Science in Its Place powerfully concludes by examining the remarkable mobility of science and the seemingly effortless way it moves around the globe. From the reception of Darwin in the land of the Maori to the giraffe that walked from Marseilles to Paris, Livingstone shows that place does matter, even in the world of science.

Geographies of Scientific Knowledge

Putting Science in Its Place

He reveals how what began as biblical criticism became a theological apologetic to reconcile religion with science—evolution in particular—and was later used to support arguments for white supremacy and segregation. From heresy to orthodoxy, from radicalism to conservatism, from humanitarianism to racism, Adam's Ancestors tells an intriguing tale of twists and turns in the cultural politics surrounding the age-old question, "Where did we come from?"

Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins

Adam's Ancestors

Professor of Geography and Intellectual History David N Livingstone

Exploring both the Enlightenment as a geographical phenomenon and the place of geography in the Enlightenment, 14 papers from a July 1996 conference in Edinburgh survey the many ways in which the world of the long 18th century was shaped through map, text, exploration, and argument and within and across spatial and intellectual borders. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

David N. Livingstone

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