Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:46:45.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Astronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Simon Schaffer
Simon Schaffer
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of ScienceUniversity of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is often assumed that all sciences travel the path of increasing precision and quantification. It is also assumed that such processes transcend the boundaries of rival scientific disciplines. The history of the personal equation has been cited as an example: the “personal equation” was the name given by astronomers after Bessel to the differences in measured transit times recorded by observers in the same situation. Later in the nineteenth century Wilhelm Wundt used this phenomenon as a type for his experiments on reaction times. For historians of psychology, this has been taken to be an exemplary case where quantified laboratory science rescued astronomy by showing that this was really a psychological phenomenon measurable only in complication experiments. This paper challenges this story. Astronomers neither ignored, nor despaired of, the personality problem. Instead, the managers of the great observatories developed a new chronometric regime of vigilant surveillance of subordinate observers. The astronomers' solution was thus intimately connected with social and material changes in their way of life: a division of labor in the observatories, a network of observing sites, a mechanization of observation. The paper documents these changes and then presents a study of one case where managers, amateurs, and psychologists clashed for authority over the personality problem. Measurement is given its meaning when situated in specific contexts of styles of work and institutions. Disciplines give meanings to values, and often resist attempts by others to redefine these meanings or to gain authority over measurement. Quantification is not a self-evident nor inevitable process in science's history, but possesses a remarkable cultural history of its own.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 115 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Airy, G. B., 1832. “Report on the Progress of Astronomy during the Present Century,” in Report of the Second Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 125–89. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Airy, G. B., 1856. “Remarks upon certain Cases of Personal Equation which appear to have escaped further notice,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 16: 6–7.Google Scholar
Airy, G. B. 1896. Autobiography, ed. Airy, Wilfrid Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, A. F. O'D., 1962. The Planet Saturn. London: Faber.Google Scholar
Alkon, Paul, 1982. “Changing the Calendar,” Eighteenth Century Life 7: 1–18.Google Scholar
Arago, D. J. F, 1853. Comptes Rendus 36: 276–84.Google Scholar
Argelander, F. W. A., 1870. “Über die Abhängigkeit der Deklinationen von den Grössen der Sterne,” Astronomische Nachrichten 75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babbage, Charles, 1835. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 3d ed. London.Google Scholar
Ball, W. V., 1915. Reminiscences and Letters of Sir Robert Ball. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Behrens, P. J., 1980. “The First Dissertation in Experimental Psychology: Max Friedrich's Study of Apperception,” in Bringmann and Tweney 1980, 193–208.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. A., 1980. “George Biddell Airy and Horology,” Annals of Science 37: 269–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, Maxine, 1980. The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815–1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessel, F. W., 1875–1876. Abhandlungen, ed. R., Engelmann 3 vols. Leipzig: W. Engelmann.Google Scholar
Boring, Edwin G., 1950. A History of Experimental Psychology, 2d ed. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Boring, Edwin G. 1961. “Beginning and Growth of Measurement in Psychology,” in Woolf 1961, 108–27.Google Scholar
Bresson, F., 1972. “Problèmes de la mathématisation en psychologie,” in La Mathématisation des doctrines informes, ed. Canguilhem, G., 135–49. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Bringmann, W. G. and Tweney, R. D, eds., 1980. Wundt Studies. Toronto: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Brooke, John H., 1977. “Natural Theology and the Plurality of Worlds,” Annals of Science 34: 221–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brozek, J., 1970. “F. C. Donders and the Timing of Mental Operations,” Psychological Reports 26: 563–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, Peter, 1981. “From Celestial Mechanics to Social Physics,” in Epistemological and Social Problems of the Sciences in the Early Nineteenth Century, ed. Jahnke, H. N. and Otte, M., 19–33. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnett, John, 1979. “British Studies of Mars 1877–1914,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 89 136–43.Google Scholar
Cannon, Susan Faye, 1978. Science in Culture: the Early Victorian Period. New York: Dawson.Google Scholar
Cawood, J., 1977. “Terrestrial Magnetism and the Development of International Collaboration in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Annals of Science 34: 551–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cawood, J. 1979. “The Magnetic Crusade: Science and Politics in Early Victorian England,” Isis 70: 493–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, Allan, 1985. “Sir George Airy and the Concept of International Standards in Science, Timekeeping and Navigation,” Vistas in Astronomy 28: 321–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clerke, Agnes, 1887. A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Collins, H. M., 1985. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Coutts, James, 1909. History of the University of Glasgow. Glasgow: Maclehose.Google Scholar
Cowan, F. M., 1912. “An Account of the Founding of the Central Observatory of Poulkova,” Popular Astronomy 20: 415–23.Google Scholar
Crowe, Michael J., 1986. The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crowther, J. G., 1968. Scientific Types. London: Barrie and Rockliff.Google Scholar
Danziger, K., 1979. “The Social Origins of Modern Psychology,” in Psychology in Social Context, ed. Buss, A. R., 27–45. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
de Jaager, J. J., 1970. Origins of Psychometry, ed. Brozek, J. and Sibinga, M. S. Nieuwkoop: de Graaf.Google Scholar
Donnelly, Marian Card, 1973, A Short History of Observatories. Eugene: Oregon University Press.Google Scholar
Downing, Arthur, 1878. “On the Probable Errors of Transits of the First and Second Limits of the Sun Observed by the Chronographic Method,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 38: 102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downing, Arthur, 1897. [On the Conference at Paris], The Observatory 20: 189.Google Scholar
Dreyer, J. L. E. and Turner, H. H, 1923. History of the Royal Astronomical Society 1820–1920. London: Wheldon and Wesley.Google Scholar
Duncombe, Raynor, 1945. “Personal Equation in Astronomy,” Popular Astronomy 53: 2–13, 63–76, 110–21.Google Scholar
Ellis, William, 1897. “Some Reminiscences,” The Observatory 20: 312–18.Google Scholar
Erman, A., 1852. Briefwechsel zwischen Olbers und Bessel, 2 vols. Leipzig: Avenarius.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter, 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter 1988. “History, Philosophy, and the Central Metaphor,” Science in Context 2 (1): 199–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graves, R. P., 1882–1889. Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, 3 vols. Dublin: Dublin University Press.Google Scholar
Hannaway, Owen, 1986. “Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe,” Isis 77: 585–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Headrick, Daniel R., 1981. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Dieter, 1976. “Some Aspects of Positional Astronomy from Bradley to Bessel,” Vistas in Astronomy 20: 183–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrmann, Dieter 1984. The History of Astronomy from Herschel to Hertzsprung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Dieter and Hamel, H. J., 1975. “Zur Frühentwicklung der Astrophysik das internationale Forscherkollektiv,” NTW 12: 25–39.Google Scholar
Herschel, John, [1829]1857. “An Address Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Astronomical Society of London, Feb. 13 1829,” in Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, 504–18, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Roberts.Google Scholar
Herschel, John 1835. Traité d'Astronomie suivi d'une Addition par Augustin Cournot. Brussels.Google Scholar
Herschel, John 1846. “Address, in Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, xxvii–xliv. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Hetherington, N., 1976. “Amateurs versus Professionals: the British Association and the Controversy over the Canals on Mars,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 86: 303–8.Google Scholar
Hetherington, N. 1983. “Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Astronomy: Science in a Developing Nation,” Annals of Science 40: 61–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinks, Arthur, 1897. “Preliminary Note on a Personal Equation Depending on Magnitude,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 57: 473–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollis, H. P., 1904. “Captain Noble,” The Observatory 27: 298–300.Google Scholar
Howse, H. D., 1975. Greenwich Observatory, vol. 3. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Howse, H. D. 1980. Greenwich Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hoyt, W. G., 1976. Lowell and Mars. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Jones, B. Z., 1968. “Diary of the Two Bonds: 1846–1849, Part 2,” Harvard Library Bulletin 16: 49–71.Google Scholar
Kern, Stephen,1983. The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Kidwell, P. A., 1984. “Women Astronomers in Britain 1780–1930”, Isis 75: 534–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, H. C., 1976. “Instrumentation of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”, Vistas in Astronomy 20: 157–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. S., 1961. “Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science,” in Woolf 1961, 31–63.Google Scholar
Lankford, John, 1979. “Amateur versus Professional: the Transatlantic Debate over the Measurement of Jovian Longitude,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 89: 574–82.Google Scholar
Lankford, John 1981. “Amateurs and Astrophysics: a Neglected Aspect in the Development of a Scientific Specialty,” Social Studies of Science 11: 275–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lankford, John 1981a. “Amateurs versus Professionals; the Controversy over Telescope Size in Late Victorian Science,” Isis 7: 11–28.Google Scholar
Lankford, John 1983. “Photography and the Long-focus Visual Refractor; Three American Case-studies 1885–1914,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 14: 77–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno, 1983. “Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World,” in Science Observed, ed. Knorr-Cetina, Karin and Mulkay, Michael, 141–170. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno 1984. Les Microbes. Paris: Editions Métailie.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno 1987. Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Laurie, P.S.. 1976. “The Observer's Life,” Vistas in Astronomy 20: 189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenoir, Timothy, 1986. “Models and Instruments in the Development of Electrophysiology, 1845–1912,” Historical Studies in Physical and Biological Sciences 17: 1–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCormmach, Russell, 1966. “O.M. Mitchel's Sidereal Messenger 1846–1848,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 110: 35–47.Google Scholar
Maskelyne, Nevil, 1799–1800. Astronomical Observations Made at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, 4 vols. London.Google Scholar
Maunder, E. Walter, 1900. The Royal Observatory Greenwich: a Glance at its History and Work. London: Religious Tract Society.Google Scholar
Meadows, A. J., 1972. Science and Controversy: a Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Meadows, A. J., 1975. Greenwich Observatory, vol. 2. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Mitchel, Ormsby, 1850. The Planetary and Stellar Worlds. London.Google Scholar
Mitchel, Ormsby, 1860. Popular Astronomy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morrell, J. B. and Thackray, Arnold, 1981. Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Newcomb, Simon, 1867. Astronomical and Meteorological Observations Made at the U.S. Naval Observatory, app. 3. Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Nichol, John Pringle, 1836. Letter to George Combe, 13 January and 21 November 1836, Combe Papers 7240, National Library of Scotland.Google Scholar
Nichol, John Pringle 1848. Letter to George Combe, 25 February 1848, Combe Papers 7296, National Library of Scotland.Google Scholar
Noble, William, 1878. “Anomalies of Vision as affecting the Observations of Faint Stars,” Astronomical Register 15.Google Scholar
Noble, William, 1890. “Presidential Address,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 1: 49–58.Google Scholar
Noble, William, 1892. “Presidential Address,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 3: 3–7.Google Scholar
Noble, William, 1896. [On the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society], The Observatory 19: 72.Google Scholar
Noble, William 1897. “Personal Equation and the Amateur Astronomer,” The Observatory 20: 353.Google Scholar
Noble, William 1897a. “Personal Equation &c. and the Amateur Astronomer,” The Observatory 20: 393.Google Scholar
Numbers, Ronald, 1977. Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, J. M., 1979. “The Crisis of Experimentalism in the 1920s: Boring and the Uses of History,” American Psychologist 34: 289–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickering, Andrew, 1984. Constructing Quarks: a Sociological History of Particle Physics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Pinch, T. J., 1986. Confronting Nature. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plotkin, H., 1978. “Astronomers versus the Navy: the Revolt of American Astronomers over the Management of the U.S. Naval Observatory 1877–1902,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122: 385–99.Google Scholar
Popplestone, J. A. and McPherson, M. W., 1980. “The Vitality of the Leipzig Model of 1880–1910 in the United States,” in Bringmann and Tweney, 226–57.Google Scholar
Porter, T. M., 1985. “The Mathematics of Society: Variation and Error in Quetelet's Statistics,” British Journal for the History of Science 18: 51–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, T. M., 1986. “The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quetelet, A., 1842. A Treatise on Man. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Quetelet, A., 1843. “Sur la Différence des Longitudes des Observatoires Royaux de Greenwich et de Bruxelles,” Nouveaux Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles 16 (1).Google Scholar
Reingold, Nathan, 1964. “Cleveland Abbe at Pulkovo: Theory and Practice in the Nineteenth Century Physical Sciences,” Archives Internationales de I'Histoire des Sciences 17: 133–47.Google Scholar
Roberts, Alexander, 1897. “Investigation concerning the Position Error Affecting Eye Estimates of Stellar Magnitude,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 57: 483–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Thomas Romney, 1859. First Armagh Catalogue of Stars. Dublin.Google Scholar
Royal Astronomical Society, 1897. [Reports of Meetings], The Observatory 20: 186–91, 226–28.Google Scholar
Safford, Truman, 1897. “On the Various Forms of Personal Equation in Meridian Transits,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 57: 504–14.Google Scholar
Safford, Truman, 1897a. “Letter to the Editors, 30 August 1897,” The Observatory 20: 386–87.Google Scholar
Sellers, F.J. and P., Doig, 1948, “The History of the British Astronomical Association,” Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association 36, number 2.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven, 1984. “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology,” Social Studies of Science 14: 481–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokal, M. M., Davis, A. B. and Merzbach, U. C., 1976. “Laboratory Instruments in the History of Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 12: 59–64.3.0.CO;2-L>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stigler, S. M., 1986. The History of Statistics. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Szanser, A. J. M., 1972. “F. G. W. Struve, Astronomer at the Pulkovo Observatory,” Annals of Science 28: 327–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E.P., 1967. “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38: 56–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todhunter, Issac, 1876. William Whewell, D.D., 2 vols. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Turner, H. H., 1897. [Editorials], The Observatory 20: 331–32, 353, 359–60, 387–88.Google Scholar
Ungerer, Gustav, 1980. “Wundt als Psycholog und Politiker,” Psychologische Rundschau 31: 99–110.Google Scholar
Van Hoorn, W. and , T. Verhave 1980. “Wundt's Changing Conceptions of a General and Theoretical Psychology,” in Wundt Studies, ed. Bringmann, W. and Tweney, R., 71–112. Toronto: Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, F. L. O., 1897. “On the Photography of Planetary Surfaces,” The Observatory 20: 331–41, 365–70, 404–10.Google Scholar
Whewell, William, 1834. “Address,” in Report of the Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, ii–xxiv. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Whewell, William, [1837] 1857. History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 3 vols. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Wilkins, G. A., 1976. “The Expanding Role of H.M. Nautical Almanac Office 1818–1975,” Vistas in Astronomy 20: 239–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Mari, 1981. “Attempts to Measure Annual Stellar Parallax: Hooke to Bessel.” Ph.D. Thesis, London University.Google Scholar
Williams, Mari, 1984. “Beyond the Planets: Early Nineteenth Century Studies of Double Stars,” British Journal for the History of Science. 17: 295–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Mari, 1987. “Astronomy in London 1860–1900,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 28: 10–26.Google Scholar
Williams, Stanley, 1896. “Large versus Small Telescopes and the Spots of Saturn,” The Observatory 19: 112–14.Google Scholar
Wise, M. Norton, 1983. “Social Statistics in a Gemeinschaft: the Idea of Statistical Causality as developed by Wilhelm Wundt and Karl Lamprecht,” in Probability Since 1800 ed. Heidelberger, M., Krüger, L., and Rheinwald, R., 97–129. Bielefeld: Klein Verlag.Google Scholar
Wise, M. Norton, 1988. “Mediating Machines,” Science in Context 2(1): 79–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, M. Norton and Smith, Crosbie, 1986. “Measurement, Work, and Industry in Lord Kelvin's Britain,” Historical Studies in Physical and Biological Sciences 17: 147–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, W. R., 1982. “Wundt's Program for the New Pyschology,” in The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth Century Thought, ed. Woodward, W. R. and Ash, M. G., 167–97. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Woolf, Harry, ed., 1961. Quantification: a History of the Meaning of Measurement in the Natural and Social Sciences. New York: History of Science Society.Google Scholar
Wundt, Wilhelm, [1873–1911] 1902. Grundzüge derphysiologischen Psychologie, 3 vols. Leipzig: Engelman.Google Scholar
Wundt, Wilhelm, 1920. Erlebtes und Erkanntes. Leipzig: Kröner.Google Scholar
Yeo, Richard, 1981. “Scientific Method and the Image of Science, 1831–1891,” in The Parliament of Science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science 1831–1981, ed. Macleod, R. M. and Collins, P., 65–88. Northwood: Science Monographs.Google Scholar
Yeo, Richard, 1986. “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science in Britain, 1830–1917” in The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method, ed. Schuster, J. A. and Yeo, R. R., 259–97. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar