From 8 February until at least 19 April 1686, the Dublin Philosophical Society was occupied with a prodigiously talented young girl whose name was never recorded. She was less than eleven years of age, but still much older than the society itself, which had begun meeting less than three years previously. Although one of many wonders engaging the curiosity of the nascent society, this girl served a surprising range of purposes, so that accompanying her anonymity was a curious malleability. Pressed into several different roles and identities, her exploitation affords a glimpse into the various qualities that could make a spectacle useful in a philosophical climate that was unique among the British Isles. The use of this girl therefore not only sheds light on the needs of a less familiar learned society, but also shows how these could differ from those of its better-understood counterparts. For a period of time, it was the versatility not of the gentlemen in Dublin, but of the prodigy they used, that best served this group on the periphery.

This article examines the early modern household's importance for producing experimental knowledge through an examination of the Halifax household of Margery and Henry Power. While Henry Power has been studied as a natural philosopher within the male-dominated intellectual circles of Cambridge and London, the epistemic labour of his wife, Margery Power, has hitherto been overlooked. From the 1650s, this couple worked in tandem to enhance their understanding of the vegetable world through various paper technologies, from books, paper slips and recipe notebooks to Margery's drawing album and Henry's published Experimental Philosophy. Focusing on Margery's practice of hand-colouring flower books, her copied and original drawings of flowers and her experimental production of ink, we argue that Margery's sensibility towards colour was crucial to Henry's microscopic observations of plants. Even if Margery's sophisticated knowledge of plants never left the household, we argue that her contribution was nevertheless crucial to the observation and representation of plants within the community of experimental philosophy. In this way, our article highlights the importance of female artists within the history of scientific observation, the use of books and paperwork in the botanical disciplines, and the relationship between household science and experimental philosophy.

In this article, I explore how the twin forces of imperial and entomological power allowed Britain to shape locust research and control across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Imperial power came from the size of the formal and informal empire, and alliances with other colonial powers to tackle a common threat to agriculture and trade. Entomological authority came primarily from the work of Boris Uvarov and his small team of museum and fieldworkers based at the Imperial Bureau of Entomology (IBE), later the Imperial Institute of Entomology (IIE). I begin by discussing how Uvarov's phase theory of the origin of swarming changed the prospects for the control of locust plagues. The imperial gaze and networks of the IBE and IIE were suited to a problem that was transnational and transcontinental. In the 1930s, Britain was drawn into plans for international cooperation on locust organizations that met the needs of science, to give better sharing of knowledge, and the needs for science, to secure the resources for research and control. However, such organizations were only created during the Second World War, when new plagues threatened military operations, as I show in relation to the measures taken to control the red locust and desert locust. In the final section, I follow the fate of the wartime cooperation in initiatives to establish permanent control organizations. It is a story of the decline of British political power in locust affairs as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and regional agencies took over. My account of British locust research and control reveals a neglected aspect of histories of entomology and imperial/colonial science, especially their international relations and the continuing importance of metropolitan research centres.

For centuries, herbarium specimens were the focus of exchange in global botanical networks. The aim was the ‘complete’ registration of the flora, for which ‘complete’ collections in botanical institutions worldwide were considered to be a necessary basis, although this ardently sought-after ideal was never achieved. The study of colonial plants became a special priority of botanical research in the metropolises. With knowledge of the many treasures of the plant world considered the key to securing wealth and power, political and economic interests influenced both the organization and the subject matter of scientific research. After the German Reich began annexing colonies in the 1880s, legal regulations established Berlin's botanical institutions as the research centre on colonial flora. They also became a clearing house for plant material from overseas. Berlin-based curators selected duplicates of herbarium specimens from the German colonies, distributing them to other botanical institutions throughout Germany. More importantly, duplicates became a form of currency in trans-imperial networks, which relied on reciprocity. In exchange for duplicate German colonial herbarium specimens, the Berlin institutions received vast quantities of botanical samples from their British, Dutch, French and American counterparts.

For several decades historians of science have interrogated the relationship between empire and science, largely focusing on European imperial powers. At the same time, scholars have sought alternatives to an early diffusionist model of the spread of modern science, seeking to capture the multi-directional and dialogic development of science and its institutions in most parts of the globe. The papers in this special issue illuminate these questions with added attention to particular claims about the exceptionalism – or not – of Islamic societies’ approach to science, modernity and politics. Each contribution centres individuals and groups who engaged with science theoretically or practically, taking seriously their analytical categories and how they understood and grappled with the social, economic and intellectual transformations happening around them. Collectively, these studies make the case for Middle Eastern and Ottoman history as useful sites for furthering our field's understanding of processes of the globalization of science and how authority, politics and science have been and continue to be interconnected.

This paper investigates the history of a discursive figure that one could call the intelligent whaler. I argue that this figure's success was made possible by the construal and public distribution of whaling intelligence in an important currency of science – facts – in the preparatory phase for the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). The strongest case for the necessity of the enterprise was New England whalers who were said to cruise uncharted parts of the oceans and whose discoveries of uncharted islands were reported in the local press. The document that stood at the core of the lobbying for an expedition was a table that newspaperman and public lecturer Jeremiah Reynolds had compiled after interviewing whaling captains in the country's principal whaling ports. Presenting whalers’ experience in tabular and synoptic form, Reynolds's table helped forge the figure of the ‘intelligent whaler’, a mariner who had better geographical knowledge than other seafarers. By investigating the paper technologies that produced the ‘intelligent whaler’, this paper shows how Reynolds's translation of ‘whaling intelligence’ from news into facts marks the beginning of the intelligent whaler's long career in US-American debates about expansionism, exploration and science.

While the study of Newton's religious views has been continuously expanding, it has not been brought to bear directly on Newton's career as an ‘experimental philosopher’. Historical perspectives on his optical experiments in particular affirm the historiographic separation between the religious and scientific aspects of his work. In this paper I examine the practical implication of Newton's theology of dominion on his early experiments on light and colours. While his predecessors had made experiments to collect evidence, I show that Newton conceived experimental research as a discipline of the practical understanding of the structure of light and the origins of colours. His conception of experimental reasoning followed his practical reflections on human beings as agents who belonged to God's dominion and who were created to serve its divine ends. These reflections suggested, more specifically, that the aim of natural philosophy was the discovery of divine rules that instrumentally constrained and facilitated human conduct in general, and perceptual judgement in particular. I show, moreover, that Newton's endeavour to subordinate experiment to divine worship had been foreshadowed by Boyle's writing on the theory and practice of the experimental philosophy.

On 26 February 1616 Galileo was ordered to cease to defend heliocentrism in any way whatsoever. This order, called a precept, automatically applied to anything he might later attempt to publish on the subject. Issued at the end of his first trial by the Roman Inquisition, the precept became the spark that triggered his second trial in 1632–3 and figured importantly in the justification of his sentence. This precept has been a subject of controversy since the late nineteenth century for its authenticity, legality and legitimacy. This paper addresses the first two points and establishes the facts of what probably happened in 1616. It does so by examining seven texts that bear on the event. All but one of these (plus Galileo's first deposition in 1633) agree tolerably well that Galileo did indeed receive the precept in the strongest form. An examination of the singleton text in the context of how the Inquisition produced and kept its records as well as of its procedures and personnel shows that it is the least reliable source. This context also supports the argument that certainty about what happened is impossible to achieve. The theory that the document most damaging to Galileo was a forgery is also disposed of. Examination of the crucial phrase successive ac incontinenti in one of the documents supports the paper's suggestion that more caution is in order before accepting the currently nearly universal claim that the precept was improper in law.

Sprat situated his analysis of the Royal Society within an emerging Anglican Royalist narrative of the longue durée of post-Reformation England. A closer examination of Sprat's own religious views reveals that his principal interest in the History of the Royal Society, as in the closely related reply to Samuel de Sorbière, the Observations, was to appropriate the advantages and benefits of the Royal Society as support for a re-established, anti-Calvinist Church of England. Sprat connected the two through a reformulation of the powerful conventions of ‘Reformation’ and ‘Israel’, both of which still resonated strongly in the religious politics of the 1660s. Applying his voluntarist theology, Sprat changed especially the representation of the chosen nation from a tale of divine castigation and punishment to a rational and probabilistic covenant based on material success as the indicator of God's pleasure. Sprat proposed that the knowledge and application of nature, through the experimental labours of the Royal Society, could build an increasingly wealthy nation and so a permanent home for the reconfigured Israel. Attaching this to a renewed monarchical and Anglican state also meant security for the traditional forms of rule.

The basic guidelines for the Science Museum Library, which determine the nature of the collections and the ways they are placed at the service of the public, were stated in the Government White Paper on the British Library of 1971: ‘The Library will be developed both as a reference library of the history of science and technology and for the provision of specialist services for the staff of the Science Museum’.

In a letter found not long ago in the Institute of Electrical Engineers and recently republished in the new edition of Faraday's correspondence, certain allegations are made about difficulties experienced by Humphry Davy in getting his work published in Napoleonic France. These allegations have been repeated in the standard Davy bibliography and are believed by at least one other Davy scholar known to the author. A new biography of Faraday makes much of this supposed incident and suggests a comparison with Stalinist Russia. No doubt the letter will continue to be quoted and the story believed until someone takes the trouble to examine the situation more closely.

Compared with other scientists of the nineteenth century, the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–73) was a complex figure. In part, this was because Liebig established such broad borders for his science. Chemical methods, popular and professional publications about chemistry, technological applications, promoting the car and even politics – all were central concerns stemming from Liebig's notion of chemistry as the central science.

When Liebig discovered John Stuart Mill's Logic, a work on the philosophy of science, it struck a deep chord within him. Mill's high praise for Liebig's chemistry certainly provided Liebig with a means to promote his own reputation. In addition, Mill's Logic presented science as a central method for the general reform of society, a goal Liebig was himself struggling to define in the early 1840s. In the scientific method, Mill discovered a ‘rule by the elite’, which he could never find nor justify in his political philosophy. This was a rule that greatly appealed to Liebig, and he set out to ensure that Mill's work was translated and published in German. Though many details of this transaction are known, this paper seeks to investigate the relationship between Liebig and Mill's book, and the significance of this relationship for understanding Liebig's role as a gatekeeper and inter-relations between science and politics.

Throughout the nineteenth century evolution theory and the possibility of reconciling it with Christian doctrine was a matter for free discussion among Catholics, but suddenly towards the end of the century the attitude of the Roman doctrinal authorities hardened. Nothing public was done but theologians, upon hearing that their theses had been examined in Rome and judged to be untenable, began to withdraw their books from sale, make public retractions and cease to discuss the subject. What processes lay behind these events, and who were the main persons responsible for what was effectively a U-turn in the official church attitude of Pope Leo XIII's pontificate, are questions that have been unanswerable until now. However, in 1998 the archives of the Holy Office, now renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, were opened to scholars so that it has become possible to clarify these particular mysteries. This article does that for the first time, and the story it has to tell provides insights into the dynamics of cultural and intellectual interactions within the Catholic Church community and with the rest of the world. This Catholic story should be seen as something more than a struggle that took place within the ranks of the Catholic Church: it was an episode in the history of science and its cultural relations in the modern world.

The admiration of the Soviet Union amongst Britain's interwar scientific left is well known. This article reveals a parallel story. Focusing on the biologists Julian Huxley and Lancelot Hogben and the scientific journalist J.G. Crowther, I show that a number of scientific thinkers began to look west, to the US. In the mid- to late 1930s and into the 1940s, Huxley, Crowther and Hogben all visited the US and commented favourably on Roosevelt's New Deal, in particular its experimental approach to politics (in the form of planning). Huxley was first to appreciate the significance of the experiment; he looked to the Tennessee Valley Authority as a model of democratic planning by persuasion that could also be applied in Britain. Crowther, meanwhile, examined the US through the lens of history of science. In Famous American Men of Science (1937) and in lectures at Harvard University, he aimed to shed light on the flaws in the Constitution which were frustrating the New Deal. Finally, Hogben's interest in the US was related to his long-standing opposition to dialectical materialism, and when he finally saw the US at first hand, he regarded it as a model for how to bring about a planned socialist society through peaceful persuasion.

Between 1867 and 1869 Michel Chasles presented a series of manuscripts to the Académie des sciences, which suggested that Isaac Newton's claims to original discovery were unfounded. It quickly became apparent to the majority of the academicians that the manuscripts were forgeries, but Chasles was repeatedly allowed to state his case. This essay focuses on the responses to the affair from four British men of science: David Brewster, Augustus De Morgan, Robert Grant and Thomas Archer Hirst. It asks why they felt it necessary to add their voices to this debate and examines their various strategies for refuting Chasles's evidence.