‘Nature’ in the laboratory: Domestication and discipline with the microscope in Victorian life science

The British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 1991, Pages 307-341

  Gooday, Graeme ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENT   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; LABORATORY; MICROSCOPY; ORGANIZATION; UNITED KINGDOM;

ACADEMIES AND INSTITUTES; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, MODERN; LABORATORIES; MICROSCOPY;

EID: 0026229296     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400027382     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. Rev. J. G. Wood, Common Objects of the Microscope, London, 1861, pp. 3, 7.
2. BAAS Report, (1866;, pt 2, pp. 82–83.
3. Cited in ‘Distribution of Awards, Normal School of Science and Royal School of Mines’, Nature, (1882), 26, p. 234.
4. J. B. Morrell, ‘The chemist breeders: the research schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson’, Ambix, (1972), 19, pp. 1–46; W. H. Brock (ed.), H. E. Armstrong and the Teaching of Science, Cambridge, 1973.
5. My chief source on the de-problematization of laboratories as socially-bounded cognitive sites is S. Shapin, ‘The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England’, Isis, (1988), 79, pp. 373–404. For a discussion of physics pedagogy see G. Gooday, ‘Precision measurement and the genesis of physics teaching laboratories in Victorian Britain’, BJHS, (1990), 23, pp. 25–51; for laboratory electrical engineering training see Gooday, ‘Teaching telegraphy and electrotechnics in the physics laboratory’, History of Technology, (1991) (forthcoming).
6. J. V. Pickstone, ‘A profession of discovery: physiology in nineteenth-century history’, BJHS, (1990), 23, p. 215; J. A. Bennett, ‘The social history of the microscope’, Journal of Microscopy, (1989), 155, p. 267.
7. See, for example, H. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, London, 1985; K. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science, Oxford, 1981 ; B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Milton Keynes, 1987; B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton, 1986.
8. Latour, (7), pp. 96–100.
9. P.Atkinson and S. Delamont, ‘“Mock-ups and cock-ups”: the stage-management of guided discovery instruction’ in P.Woods and M. Hammersley (eds.) School Experience: Explorations in the Sociology of Education, London, 1977; see Collins, (7), pp. 160–1 for further discussion.
10. This term I have drawn from Ellen Frank's analysis of the construction of ’ natural ’ household environments by Victorian architects and artists, E. Frank, ‘The domestication of nature: five houses in the Lake District’, in U. C. Knoepflmacher and G. B. Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination, Berkeley, London and Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 68–92.
11. My reading of Foucault on the production, distribution and regulation of discourse, and the social powers wielded by its users, follows that of T. Crowley in The Politics of Discourse, Basingstoke and London, 1989, pp. 1–4.
12. Examples include S. Bradbury, The Evolution of the Microscope, Oxford, 1967; G. L'E. Turner, Essays on the History of the Microscope, Oxford, 1980; G. L'E. Turner, The Great Age of the Microscope, Bristol, 1989; G. L'E. Turner, God Bless the Microscope!, Oxford, 1989.
13. My analysis deploys selected elements of Michel Foucault's analysis of institutionalized methods of disciplinary order within a framework of social interest theory ; see Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London, 1977, pp. 170–94. In this case-study in empirical social history it is not appropriate, however, to utilize a ‘Foucauldian’ structuralist theory of the synchronic diffusion of power amongst unidentified ‘docile bodies’, pp. 135–9.
14. For a fictionalized rendition of a Huxleyean regime of microscopy in the mid 1880s, see H. G. Wells’ pseudo-autobiographical story ‘A slip under the microscope’, in H. G. Wells, Complete Short Stories, London, 1927, pp. 529–48.
15. ‘The word “Nature”’, in The Collected Works of j. S. Mill, XXII, Toronto, 1986, p. 9.
16. L. Jordanova (ed.), Languages of Nature: Critical Essays on Science and Literature, London, 1986, p. 21.
17. C. Merchant. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, London, 1980, esp. pp. XV–XX.
18. For a discussion of ‘Nature’ as a problematic legitimating device for Charles Darwin see G. Beer, ‘The face of nature: anthropomorphic elements in the language of the origin of species ’, in L. Jordanova (éd.) (16), pp. 224, 230–8.
19. G. B. Tennyson, ‘The sacramental imagination’, in Knoepflmacher and Tennyson, (10), p. 371.
20. Jordanova, (16); see B.Johnson, ‘“The Perfection of Species” and Hardy's Tess’, and U.C. Knoepflmacher, ‘Mutations of the Wordsworthian child of Nature’, in Knoepflmacher and Tennyson (eds.), (10), pp. 259–77, 391–425.
21. J. Morrell and A. Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford, 1981; BAAS Report (1831), p. 43.
22. Morrell and Thackray, pp. 29–34: ‘The appeal to Nature‘. Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford, 1981.
23. D. E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History, Harmondsworth, 1976, pp. 158–90.
24. S. Smiles, Life of a Scottish Naturalist, London, 1877; Robert Dick, Geologist and Botanist, London, 1877. See L. Barber, The Heyday of Natural History 1820–1870, London, 1980, p. 41, for a discussion of Grant's enlistment by contemporaries as a paragon of virtuous natural history.
25. BAAS Report, (1863), pt 2, p. 92.
26. BAAS Report, p. 93. (1863), pt 2
27. P. H. Gosse, A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica, London, 1851, p. v, cited in Barber, (24), p. 41.
28. C. Kingsley, Glaucus, or, the Wonders of the Shore, Cambridge, 1855, pp. 67–8.
29. C. Kingsley, p. 145. Glaucus, or, the Wonders of the Shore, Cambridge, 1855.
30. C. Kingsley, ‘The study of natural history’, in Scientific Lectures and Essays, London, 1885, pp. 187–8.
31. H. E. Roscoe, ‘Original research as a means of education’, Nature, (1873), 8, p. 539.
32. See J. Thompson, The Owens College: Its Foundation and Growth, Manchester, 1886.
33. Huxley wrote: ‘it seemed to me that no more fitting preface could be put before a Journal, which aims to mirror the progress of that fashioning by Nature of a picture of herself, in the mind of man, which we call the progress of science’, T. H. Huxley, ‘Nature’, Nature, (1869), 1, pp. 9–11; for further discussion see G. Beer, ‘Translation or transformation ? The relations of literature and science’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, (1990), 44, p. 82.
34. ‘XXXIV’, Selincourt (ed.), Wordsworth's Poetical Works, vol. 3, Oxford, 1946, p. 19.
35. ‘II: The Tables Turned…’, Selincourt, (ed.), Wordsworth's Poetical Works, vol. 4, Oxford, 1947, p. 57.
36. W. B. Grove, ‘The happy fungus-hunter’, Midland Naturalist, (1892), 15, p. 161; cited without documentation in Allen, (23), pp. 193–4.
37. W. Thomson, ‘Scientific laboratories’, Nature, (1885), 31, p. 409.
38. The importance of establishing that an instrument is a transparent mediator of ‘Nature’ when negotiating an interpretative consensus of its behaviour amongst diverse audiences is discussed in S. Schaffer, ‘Glass works: Newton's prisms and the uses of experiment’, in D.Gooding, T. Pinch and S. Schaffer (eds.), The Uses of Experiment, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 67–104.
39. D. Gooding, ‘In “Nature's School”: Faraday as an experimentalist’, in D. Gooding and F. James (eds.), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791–1867, Basingstoke, 1985, pp. 105–7.
40. J. S. Bowerbank, ’ Reminiscences of the early times of the achromatic microscope ’, Monthly Microscopical Journal, (1870), 3, p. 285.
41. Allen, (23), pp. 128–40; Barber, (24), pp. 111–24.
42. P. Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Britain: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885, London and Toronto, 1978, p. 64.
43. D. Richter, Riotous Victorians, Ohio and London, 1981, pp. 51–61 ; A. Wood, Nineteenth-Century Britain 1815–1914, London, 1968, pp. 271–8, 453.
44. Barber, (24), pp. 117–20.
45. P. H. Gosse, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Sea, 1st edn, London, 1854; 2nd edn (revised), London, 1856.
46. Gosse, (1856), esp. pp. 250–89. For a more detailed political interpretation of the aquarium see C. Hamlin, ‘Robert Warrington and the moral economy of the aquarium’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1986), 19, pp. 131–53.
47. C. Kingsley, (28), pp. 139–40.
48. Rev. J. G. Wood, The Fresh and Salt Water Aquarium, 1868, London, pp. 3, 5; see Allen, (23), p. 140 and Barber, (24), pp. 121–2 for the popular demise of aquaria.
49. A contemporary engraving of this event from the Illustrated London News is reproduced in O. Brown, S. Butler and R. Nunall, The Social History of the Microscope, Cambridge, 1986, p. 1, and Barber, (24), p. 16.
50. Brown et al., (50), pp. 5–9.
51. P. H. Gosse, Evenings with the Microscope, London, 1859; Edwin Lankester, Half-Hours with the Microscope, London, 1859; J. G. Wood, (1); Hon. Mrs. Ward, A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope, London, 1858, Microscope Teachings, London, 1864 and The Microscope, 3rd edn, London, 1869.
52. Ward, The Microscope, 3rd edn, 1869, p. vi.
53. E. Lankester, (52), pp. 12, 24. The author was editor of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopy and the father of Edwin Ray Lankester (see below), DNB.
54. Lankester, (52), pp. 31, 58, 59.
55. Wood, (1), p. 3.
56. Rev. J. B. Reade, ‘Microscopic test objects under parallel light and corrected powers’, Popular Science Review, (1870), 9, p. 140; Ward, (53), p. 40. See Wood in first epigraph above for a further example of this usage.
57. C. Collingwood, ‘The microscope; with directions for its use’, Popular Science Review, (1862), 1, p. 44; Gosse, (52), p. iv.
58. Wood, (1), p. 2. For a discussion of'improvements’ in microscope construction due to Lister el al., see below.
59. Collingwood, (58), pp. 462, 464; Ward, (53), p. 12.
60. BAAS Report, (1870), pt 2, p. 92; emphasis added.
61. Gosse, (52), pp. iv-v.
62. BAAS Report, (1870), pt 2, p. 93; emphasis added.
63. Wood, (1), p. 12. For a further discussion of ‘tacit’ knowledge in the practice of microscopy see the section on Beale and Carpenter below.
64. Brown et al., (50), p. 7. For a parallel account of the moral imperatives used to promote popular microscopy in the USA see J. H. Warner, ‘“Exploring the inner labyrinths of creation”: popular microscopy in nineteenth-century America, Journal of the History of Medicine, (1982), 37, pp. 24–27.
65. ‘The microscope in education’, The Student and Intellectual Observer, (1868), 1, pp. 41–46.
66. Gooday, (5), pp. 43–50.
67. ‘The microscope in education’, (66), p. 41.
68. ‘The microscope in education’, pp. 42, 44, emphasis added. (66).
69. ‘The microscope in education’, pp. 44, 46. (66).
70. Bowerbank, (41), Brown et al., (50).
71. J. Goodsir, ‘On the progress of anatomy’, in W. Turner (ed.), The Anatomical Memoirs of John Goodsir F.R.S., Edinburgh, 1868, vol. 1, p. 367.
72. Brown et al., (50), p. 6; Bradbury, (12), pp. 191–8.
73. Rev. W. Tuckwell, Reminiscences of Oxford, London, 1900, pp. 45–6 ; cited without interpretation in B. Bracegirdle, A History of Microtechnique, London, 1978, p. xv; Dr James Adey Ogle, Aldrichian Professor of Clinical Medicine 1824–51 and Regius Professor of Physic, 1851–7; Dr John Kidd, Regius Professor of Physic 1822–51, DNB.
74. L. Beale, How to Work with the Microscope, 4th edn, London, 1868; W. Carpenter, The Microscope and its Revelations, 4th edn, London 1868. I have chosen the fourth editions of 1868 for both works as literary resources on microscopy available immediately prior to the commencement of Huxley's course.
75. Bradbury, (12), pp. 203–4; Bradbury comments that a similar method was employed by Acland at Oxford.
76. Carpenter wrote flatteringly of his rival's invention that it ‘may be conveniently applied to the purposes of clinical observation (the examination of Urinary Deposits, Blood, Sputa &c), either in hospital or in private practice ; whilst it may also advantageously be used by the Field Naturalist in examining specimens of Water for Animalcules, Protophytes, …c’, Carpenter, (75), pp. 82–83.
77. Carpenter, (75), p. 83.
78. Beale, (75), p. 16.
79. Beale, (75), pp. 3, 189, emphasis added.
80. Carpenter, (75), pp. 147, 164–6.
81. Beale, (75), pp. 33–34.
82. See Gosse, (27).
83. Beale, (75), pp. 33–34.
84. Beale, (75), pp. 35–41; Carpenter, (75), pp. 93–102.
85. ‘The microscope in education’, (66), p. 43.
86. Carpenter, (75), p. 138.
87. Beale, (75), pp. 19–20; Carpenter, (75), pp. 1390.
88. T. Davies (éd. J. Matthews), On Mounting Microscopical Objects, 2nd edn, London, 1873, pp. 3–23; Beale, (75), p. 76. For Beale's innovations in injection technology see ’ Lionel Smith Beale, 1828–1906 [Obituary] ’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, (1907), 77B, pp. lix, lxii.
89. B. Bracegirdle, (74), pp. 8–288.
90. Beale, (75), pp. 44–217; Carpenter, (75), pp. 185–238; Davies, (90).
91. Davies, (90), p. 173.
92. Beale, (75), p. 91.
93. E. Ray Lanlcester, ‘Instruction to science teachers at South Kensington’, Nature, (1871), 4, p. 362. Note Lankester's subtle incorporation of the Journal's Wordsworthian epigraph into this legitimatory discourse.
94. G. Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology, Princeton, 1978, pp. 148–56; S. Butler, ‘Centres and peripheries: the development of British physiology, 1870–1914’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1988), 21, pp. 473–500.
95. Geison, pp. 162–9. Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology, Princeton, 1978.
96. C. Bibby, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life and Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley 1825–1895, Oxford, 1972, pp. 78–80; Geison, (96), pp. 130–47; F. O. Bower, Sixty Years of Botany in Britain (1875–1935): Impressions of an Eye-Witness, London, 1938; B. Thomason, ‘The new botany in Britain, 1870–1914’, UMIST, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, pp. 8, 13, 21, 23.
97. See Gooday, (5), pp. 49–50 and Second Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science, London, 1872, pp. xi-xx.
98. See also H. Butterworth. ‘The Science and Art Department Examinations, origins and achievements’, in R. McLeod (ed.), Days of Judgement: Science Examinations and the Organization of Knowledge in Late Victorian England, Driffield, 1982.
99. Minutes of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instructions and the Advancement of Science, 1870, p. 766.
100. Huxley to Lockyer, c. 23 June 1871, in Second Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science, (1872), appendix xvn, pp. 54–5.
101. Second Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science, pp. 53–5. (1872).
102. T.H.Huxley, ‘“Scientific Education’, notes from an after dinner speech to Liverpool Philomathic Society, 1869’, in Science and Education: Essays, London, 1893, pp. 116–17, 127.
103. Geison, (96), p. 132.
104. Geison, (96), p. 132.
105. E. Ray Lankester, (95), p. 362.
106. For Huxley's concern to avoid controversy on evolutionary matters in his teaching see the correspondence reproduced in J. A. Caron, ‘Biology in the life sciences: a historiographical contribution’, History of Science, (1988), 26, p. 250; on the notoriety of Huxley's 1869 lecture'On the physical basis of life’, see Bibby, (98), p. 63.
107. Foucault, (13), ‘The means of correct training’, pp. 170–94. Note that in drawing upon this theory of normalizing discipline, I am giving a social constructivist account of ‘Nature’ qua pedagogical authority and not a ’ Foucauldian ’ structuralist analysis of power diffusion.
108. Lankester, [95); T. H. Huxley and H. N. Martin, A Course of Instruction in Elementary Biology, Cambridge, 1875.
109. Lankester, (95), p. 362. For comparative analysis of Huxley's scheme of ‘biology’ see Caron, (111).
110. Lankester, (95), pp. 362–3.
111. Huxley and Martin, (113), p. 7.
112. Lankester, (95), pp. 363–4.
113. Cited in Geison, (96), p. 133. 14
114. ‘On the study of biology’, in Huxley, (105), pp. 284–6.
115. ‘The laboratory in modern science’, Science, (1884), 3, p. 174, cited in Gooday, (5), p. 27.