5 - Island Kingdoms in the Making: The New Laboratories and the Fragmentation of Dutch Universities c.1900

Summary

Abstract

New laboratories not only reflect current ideas about science and science pedagogy; they also shape ideas and behaviour. The rise of the modern research laboratory in the second half of the nineteenth century contributed to the emergence of a new self-image for universities in Europe. The need to house the new laboratories often resulted in laboratories being scattered across the city, thus fragmenting university life. Instead of a close-knit community, the university became an archipelago of institutes, laboratories, lecture halls, and administrative buildings, where life for professors and students centred on their own institute rather than the entire university. The situation in the Netherlands, where the state-funded universities expanded tremendously around 1900, offers a key case study of these developments.

Keywords: university expansion, the Netherlands, commune vinculum, fragmentation of university life, unity of science

Introduction

Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously said, ‘We shape our buildings, but afterwards they shape us.’ He said this in October 1943 during a debate in the House of Commons on restoring the Houses of Parliament in London, following the destruction of the House of Commons chamber in a German air strike in 1941. Churchill meant that the buildings we live and work in somehow direct our behaviour, our thoughts, and our perception of reality. Thus, the House of Commons, with its characteristic layout of two opposing sets of bench rows, had shaped political culture in Great Britain, and since Churchill felt comfortable with this way of doing politics, he advocated the complete restoration of the chamber.

The history of laboratories offers manifold examples of the same phenomenon. Sophie Forgan has convincingly demonstrated that the way laboratories and lecture halls were constructed in the nineteenth century not only helped to create scientific disciplines but in many ways also shaped or ‘disciplined’ the students. She points to the practical chemistry classroom at Liverpool University College around 1890, where benches were arranged in curved rows, raking gently upwards from the lecturer’s desk. This enabled the lecturer to maintain eye contact with all the students and hold the attention of each, thus maintaining control and discipline.