The professional and the scientist in nineteenth-century America

ISIS

Volumn 100, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 699-732

  Lucier, Paul ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORY; PERCEPTION; PHILOSOPHY; PROFESSIONAL STANDARD; REVIEW; SCIENCE; SOCIAL CLASS; UNITED STATES;

HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; PHILOSOPHY; PROFESSIONAL ROLE; SCIENCE; SOCIAL MOBILITY; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; UNITED STATES;

EID: 77949299659     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/652016     Document Type: Review

References (251)

1. "Geology," North American Review, Apr. 1831, 32:471- 490, on p. 482 (the accusation against Eaton);
2. "Gen.Van Rensselaer's Note," American Journal of Science, 1831, 20:419-420 (in support of Eaton);
3. Henry A. Rowland, "A Plea for Pure Science," Science, 1883, 29:242-250, on pp. 244, 245.
4. George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), p. 34.
5. Daniels realized that the four-step framework was a simplification; nonetheless, it was useful in explaining unspecified "perplexing facts" about American science. See Daniels, "The Process of Professionalization in American Science: The Emergent Period, 1820-1860," Isis, 1967, 58:151-166, on p. 151. On the general trend toward professionalization in America see Nathan O. Hatch, ed., The Professions in American History (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1988).
6. Nathan Reingold, "Definitions and Speculations: The Professionalization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century," in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 33-69, on p. 34.
7. The essay was reprinted in Reingold, Science, American Style (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 24-53. For a very critical history of professions and professionalism see Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976).
8. Gerald L. Geison, "Introduction," in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America, ed. Geison (Chapel Hill: Univ. North Carolina Press, 1983), pp. 3-11, on p. 6.
9. The companion volume from the Davis seminar was Geison, ed., Professions and the French State, 1700 - 1900 (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 1984). For Haskell's view see Thomas L. Haskell, ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984), p. xix.
10. For Freidson's characterization see Eliot Freidson, "Are Professions Necessary?" ibid., pp. 3-27, on p. 5.
11. See also Laurence Veysey, "Who's a Professional? Who Cares?" Reviews in American History, 1975, 3:419-423.
12. Another interpretation might be that professionalization had become such a stale and standard theme that scholars were looking for something (e.g., experts and expertise) edgy and exciting. An interesting, albeit select, example might be found in the work of James Secord. In Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian- Silurian Dispute (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986).
13. Secord identified and discussed the category " professionalization"; but in Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000).
14. Morrell thought the model of professionalization, when applied as an occupational strategy, as Reingold had proposed, did have heuristic value in research because it was "not deterministic." But then he went on to identify, retrospectively, the six "stages" of professionalization: full-time paid positions; specialist qualifications- e.g., the Ph.D.; training procedures, especially in university laboratories; specialized publications; scientific societies; and autonomous reward systems. See Jack Morrell, "Professionalisation," in Companion to the History of Science, ed. R. C. Olby, G. N. Cantor, J. R. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 980-989.
15. Thomas F. Gieryn, "Boundaries of Science," in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), pp. 393-443, on p. 411.
16. He is discussing Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1988). This is the only discussion of professionalization in the volume. "The Problem of Expertise" and its congeries of characteristics-authority, accountability, publics-are addressed in Susan Cozzens and Edward Woodhouse, "Science, Government, and the Politics of Knowledge," ibid., pp. 533-553.
17. Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 67-68.
18. An exception to the 1990s retreat from professionalization is Thomas Broman, "Rethinking Professionalization: Theory, Practice, and Professional Ideology in Eighteenth-Century German Medicine," Journal of Modern History, 1995, 67:835-872.
19. Broman argued for adding another criterion-the ability to join theory and practice-to the familiar list of specialized education, code of ethics, licensing, social prestige, market monopoly, and autonomy. His criteria were adapted from Charles E. McClellan, The German Experience of Professionalization (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), p. 14.
20. Adrian Desmond, "Redefining the X Axis: 'Professionals,' 'Amateurs,' and the Making of Mid-Victorian Biology-A Progress Report," Journal of the History of Biology, 2001, 34:3-50, on p. 4.
21. Desmond introduced three articles by younger scholars: Richard Bellon, "Joseph Dalton Hooker's Ideals for a Professional Man of Science," ibid., pp. 51-82
22. John C. Waller, "Gentlemanly Men of Science: Sir Francis Galton and the Professionalization of the British Life-Sciences," ibid., pp. 83-114
23. Samuel J. J. Alberti, "Amateurs and Professionals in One County: Biology and Natural History in Late Victorian Yorkshire," ibid., pp. 115-147.
24. Desmond, "Redefining the X Axis," p. 4.
25. See also Paul White, Thomas Huxley: Making the "Man of Science" (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)
26. Barton, "'Huxley, Lubbock, and Half a Dozen Others': Professionals and Gentlemen in the Formation of the X Club," Isis, 1998, 89:410-444
27. Richard Harrison Shryock, "American Indifference to Basic Science during the Nineteenth Century," Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 1948-1949, 28:3-18, rpt. in The Sociology of Science, ed. Bernard Barber and Walter Hirsch (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1962), pp. 98-110;
28. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), Vol.2, Pt. 1, Ch. 10, p. 463
29. Reingold, "Definitions and Speculations" (cit. n. 3), p. 31
30. Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, p. 4.
31. Charlotte M. Porter's review of The Launching of Modern American Science, Technology and Culture, 1989, 30:136-138
32. For other insightful comments about the limitations of professionalization see Mary Ann James, Elites in Conflict: The Antebellum Clash over the Dudley Observatory (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1987), esp. Chs. 1, 14
33. Joseph Henry, "Thoughts on Education" [introductory discourse before the American Association for the Advancement of Education, delivered at Washington, D.C., December 1854], in The Scientific Writings of Joseph Henry, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1887), Vol.1, pp. 325-343, on pp. 336-337.
34. A second, more specific, legal definition related to a witness in a court case who possessed special knowledge or experience unavailable to persons more generally. An expert witness testified, supposedly, to facts. See the entries "Expert" and "Profession" in The Century Dictionary, ed. William Dwight Whitney (New York, 1889-1891), and in multiple editions thereafter. On expert witnessing see Tal Golan, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature: The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004); and Paul Lucier, "Court and Controversy: Patenting Science in the Nineteenth Century," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1996, 29:139-154.
35. This analysis relies on a systematic survey of the annual presidential addresses to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of addresses to various other scientific societies. Some of the AAAS addresses have been studied before; however, the late nineteenth-century addresses have not received close attention. For the antebellum period see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848-1860 (Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 1976).
36. An especially useful research tool can be found at the Making of America Journal Collection site hosted by Cornell University, which allows scholars to search some of the most important nineteenth-century publications, including Scientific American, the North American Review, and Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
37. As John W. Servos noted, "historians have little patience for studies of their own vocabulary": Servos, "Research Schools and Their Histories," Osiris, N.S., 1993, 8:3-15, on p. 3.
38. But, like Servos, I think it is worthwhile to reflect on the meanings of the words and categories we use so frequently. The only study of the introduction of the term "scientist" remains Sydney Ross, "Scientist: The Story of a Word," Annals of Science, 1962, 18:65-85.
39. Robert Kohler identified social role as one of the principal areas of commonality for historians of science. "Societies have a limited taxonomy of recognized social categories," he explained, "which are often associated with different kinds of work or livelihood." It is exactly this strong link between self-identity and occupation that this essay tries to underscore. See Robert E. Kohler, "A Generalist's Vision," Isis, 2005, 96:224 -229, on p. 227.
40. For an insight into how this link between character and career played out for twentieth-century American scientists see Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2008).
41. The commercial relations of American men of science can be brought to bear on the prevailing models of professionalization in the same way that British historians have examined the career-making strategies and occupational status of midcentury Victorian men of science. In this regard, it is important to underscore that Britons, like Huxley and the X Club members, showed a marked antipathy toward the commercialization of science; see Barton, "'Influential Set of Chaps'" (cit. n. 11), pp. 53, 72.
42. On Huxley's career-making strategies see White, Thomas Huxley (cit. n. 11); and Adrian Desmond, Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997). Huxley was eminently quotable, and therefore historians have tended to rely on him too much, an evidential bias that Ruth Barton cleverly labeled "the Huxley problem": Barton, "'Men of Science'" (cit. n. 11), p. 75.
43. For more on the commercial relations of American men of science see Paul Lucier, Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820-1890 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2008).
44. In a new introduction to a book originally published in 1971, Joseph Ben-David went to great effort to explain why the anachronistic use of the terms "science" and "scientists" should not be misunderstood as teleological but, rather, as legitimate: Ben-David, The Scientist's Role in Society: A Comparative Study with a new Introduction (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1984), pp. xi-xxvi. See also Ross, "Scientist" (cit. n. 17).
45. Hugh Richard Slotten, in his book on Alexander Dallas Bache, was very clear and careful in his description of "the man of science," but once he got to "professionalization" "the scientist" took over. See Slotten, Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science (cit. n. 13), Chs. 1, 2
46. See also Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, esp. Chs. 7, 8, in which Bruce simply begins with science in 1846 as being already professionalized.
47. Ruth Barton found that quite the opposite was the case in Britain. Throughout the nineteenth century (from the 1830s to the 1890s), "men of science" remained the most popular and preferred term: Barton, "'Men of Science'" (cit. n. 11), p. 80.
48. John C. Greene, American Science in the Age of Jefferson (Ames: Univ. Iowa Press, 1984), p. 244.
49. "Geology" (cit. n. 1), pp. 482, 483, 484.
50. Amos Eaton, "Geological Podromus," Amer. J. Sci., 1830, 17:63- 69, on p. 68
51. Benjamin Silliman, "Remarks," ibid., 1831, 20:420.
52. As Larry Stewart has shown, a number of eighteenth-century British natural philosophers advised wealthy landowners on improvement schemes. See Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992)
53. Amos Eaton, "General Geological Strata," Amer. J. Sci., 1828, 14:359 -368, on p. 360
54. Bache, cited in Slotten, Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science (cit. n. 13), p. 33.
55. "Gen. Van Rensselaer's Note" (cit. n. 1). The survey geologists did include several of Eaton's students, notably James Hall. But Eaton disapproved of several of the corps members; see Aldrich, New York State Natural History Survey (cit. n. 25), pp. 53-54, 64-68.
56. On the purported role of surveys in diffusing wealth and power see ibid., p. 37.
57. See John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: Univ. North Carolina Press, 2001).
58. The literature is large, principally because surveys represent the earliest government support for American science. See, e.g., George P. Merrill, The First One Hundred Years of American Geology (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1924); Merrill, Contributions to a History of American State Geological and Natural History Surveys (Bulletin 109) (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1920); Michele L. Aldrich, "American State Geological Surveys, 1820-1845," in Two Hundred Years of Geology in America, ed. Cecil J. Schneer (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press New England for Univ. New Hampshire, 1979), pp. 133-144
59. Stephen P. Turner, "The Survey in Nineteenth-Century American Geology: The Evolution of a Form of Patronage," Minerva, 1987, 25:282-330;
60. Anne Marie Millbrooke, "State Geological Surveys of the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Pennsylvania, 1981); and Julie Renee Newell, "American Geologists and Their Geology: The Formation of the American Geological Community, 1780-1865" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, 1993).
61. In America, state governments literally consulted men of science-in other words, paid for their services. In Britain, government patronage was regarded by men of science as a reward or honorarium. See Bellon, "Joseph Dalton Hooker's Ideals for a Professional Man of Science" (cit. n. 10), pp. 56-63, esp. p. 61.
62. According to Secord, men of science employed by the Geological Survey of Great Britain ("careerists" who received but a pittance) wanted national recognition and social standing commensurate with their expertise: Secord, Victorian Sensation (cit. n. 6), pp. 471-479, esp. p. 478.
63. Aldrich, New York State Natural History Survey (cit. n. 25), p. 38.
64. On cronyism see Larson, Internal Improvement (cit. n. 28). Both Daniels and Bruce cited the work of James Hall, the geologist and paleontologist on the New York natural history survey, as exemplifying the ability of surveyors to circumvent practical demands and instead pursue their own research. See Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, p. 168;
65. On the political and practical nature of Hall's science (as well as the combination of "practical" and "theoretical" geology) see Aldrich, "American State Geological Surveys" (cit. n. 29).
66. Kohlstedt, Formation of the American Scientific Community (cit. n. 16). The AAAS held annual meetings and published the papers from those meetings in its Proceedings. The "Constitution of the Association," from which these quotations are taken, was reprinted in each issue of the Proceedings.
67. Unlike the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), on which it was modeled, there were no classes of membership in the AAAS. See Jack B. Morrell and Arnold W. Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981).
68. A. D. Bache, "Anniversary Address," in Transactions of the American Institute of the City of New-York, for the Year 1856 (1857), pp. 73-112, on pp. 103, 108
69. Joseph Henry to Alexander Dallas Bache, 9 Aug. 1838, in The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.4, ed. Nathan Reingold (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 95-106, on p. 100.
70. In his address Bache was discussing plans for a national university and the role professors would play in it-they would lecture ("diffuse the sciences") and do research ("cultivate science"). It is unfortunate for later historiography that Nathan Reingold chose the term "cultivators" in place of "amateurs," a very popular contemporary term that could be used with careful explanation. See Reingold, "Definitions and Speculations" (cit. n. 3).
71. According to Mark Beach, the Lazzaroni was a group of nine or ten friends who "lived comfortably, dined sumptuously and drank heavily." These men, who also shared scientific interests, were Alexander Dallas Bache (Coast Survey), Benjamin Peirce (Harvard), Louis Agassiz (Harvard), Joseph Henry (Smithsonian), Charles Henry Davis (Coast Survey, Nautical Almanac), Benjamin Apthorp Gould (Coast Survey, Dudley Observatory), John Fries Frazer (Penn), Oliver Wolcott Gibbs (CCNY, Harvard), and Cornelius C. Felton (Harvard). James Dwight Dana (Yale) is sometimes included, but his strong disagreements with Agassiz and his different institutional location took him outside the Lazzaroni circle. See Beach, "Was There a Scientific Lazzaroni?" in Nineteenth-Century American Science: A Reappraisal, ed. George H. Daniels (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 115-132, on p. 119.
72. For detailed biographies of the group and their allies and opponents see Lillian B. Miller, The Lazzaroni: Science and Scientists in Mid-Nineteenth- Century America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972).
73. Shryock, "American Indifference to Basic Science during the Nineteenth Century," in Sociology of Science, ed. Barber and Hirsch (cit. n. 12), pp. 104, 106.
74. "I do not know if Americans were indifferent to basic research," declared Reingold, "and neither does anyone else." Reingold was the most ardent advocate for more studies of what nineteenth-century American men of science actually did. See Nathan Reingold, "American Indifference to Basic Science: A Reappraisal," in Nineteenth-Century American Science, ed. Daniels, pp. 38-62, on p. 39.
75. Jan Golinski suggested "disciplinarity"-analysis of the reconfiguration of scientific disciplines during the nineteenth century among particular communities of practitioners and within larger formations of power-as an antidote to the teleology of professionalization models: Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge (cit. n. 9), pp. 69-70.
76. Interestingly enough, in their introduction to the first volume of the new (second) series of Osiris, the coeditors, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Margaret W. Rossiter, noted that "older topics[,] like American indifference to basic research and the Lazzaroni, are barely mentioned." Particular disciplines, they noted, are the new "topics to pursue." Rossiter and Kohlstedt, "Introduction," Osiris, N.S., 1985, 1:9 -16, on pp. 9, 11.
77. On disciplines and the difficulties inherent in defining them see John W. Servos, Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of a Science in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), preface.
78. In the physical sciences, mathematics exemplified theoretical achievement and consequently, for historians, defined the esoteric or professional edge. Daniels called preemption, the first stage in his model, "the edge of incomprehensibility," a reference to Charles Coulston Gillispie's magisterial The Edge of Objectivity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960); see Daniels, "Process of Professionalization in American Science" (cit. n. 2), p. 152.
79. Nathan Reingold, ed., Science in Nineteenth-Century America: A Documentary History (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 59-62
80. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, reprint ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988). Lurie was among the first historians to write extensively about the Lazzaroni.
81. On the American geological community see, e.g., Merrill, First One Hundred Years of American Geology (cit. n. 29); Mary C. Rabbitt, Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare, Vol.1: Before 1879 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979); Aldrich, New York State Natural History Survey (cit. n. 25); and Lucier, Scientists and Swindlers (cit. n. 19). On the practices and theories of the stratigraphical enterprise (in contrast to the reductionist tendencies in explanations of the physical sciences) see Secord, Controversy in Victorian Geology (cit. n. 6), pp. 24-38
82. Martin J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 42-60. On Rogers see Patsy Gerstner, Henry Darwin Rogers, 1808-1866: American Geologist (Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1994), esp. Chs. 8, 9.
83. Joseph Henry, "Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science," in The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.8: January 1850-December 1853: The Smithsonian Years, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), pp. 88-103, on pp. 98-99.
84. Another example of Henry's vision of science comes from a letter regarding his class syllabus. "The definition I have given of the object of science is of great importance to me in my manner of teaching the subject of Physique. I wish to draw a wide distinction between the mere classification and description of phenomena and the laws which give us full command of all the facts and enable us to predict": Henry to Lewis R. Gibbs, 31 May 1845, in The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.6: January 1844-December 1846: The Princeton Years, ed. Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 280-284, on p. 281.
85. Alexander Dallas Bache, "Address of Professor A. D. Bache," Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1852, 6:xli-lx, on p. li.
86. Here, "profession" is in quotation marks to signal its nineteenth-century usage. The middle years of the nineteenth century marked the nadir of the professions in America, especially medicine. See Haber, Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions (cit. n. 15), pp. 91-116
87. Richard Harrison Shryock, Medical Licensing in America, 1650 - 1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1967). For the official, in-house story of the medical profession see Morris Fishbein, A History of the American Medical Association, 1847 to 1947 (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1947).
88. Despite the fact that several prominent men of science held medical degrees (both earned and honorary) or taught in medical schools, the link between science and medicine was not forged. Kohlstedt mentioned in a footnote that the only formal connection between the AMA and the AAAS was a vote among the men of science to send a delegation the AMA in 1856; see Kohlstedt, Formation of the American Scientific Community (cit. n. 16), p. 137.
89. Morrell made the same point with respect to the BAAS. "It is significant that the early Association deliberately ignored several matters concerned with professionalisation, such as creation of full-time paid posts by government, the provision of government honours and pensions and action of certification and pupillage": Morrell, "Professionalisation" (cit. n. 7), p. 987.
90. Charles Babbage, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (London: B. Fellowes, 1830);
91. Howard S. Miller, Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America (Seattle: Univ. Washington Press, 1970). Cf. W. H. Brock, "The Spectrum of Scientific Patronage," in The Patronage of Science in the Nineteenth Century, ed. G. L'E. Turner (Leyden: Noordhoff International, 1976), pp. 173-206.
92. Brock focused mostly on the state, but he did mention other commercial commissions and noted some monetary amounts. Charles Gillispie applied a tripartite model of professionalization-learning, livelihood, legitimation- to various occupations in Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980). Critics of modern science and science policy have treated money as of supreme importance. See David S. Greenberg, Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2001).
93. Daniels, "Process of Professionalization in American Science" (cit. n. 2); and Roy Porter, "Gentlemen and Geology: The Emergence of a Scientific Career, 1660-1920," Historical Journal, 1978, 21:809-836, on p. 823 n 66.
94. James A. Secord used the term "commercial science" to describe this array of opportunities; see Secord, Victorian Sensation (cit. n. 6), pp. 437-439.
95. Regarding Huxley see Desmond, Huxley (cit. n. 19). Aileen Fyfe noted that there was an important difference between writing for money and writing for reputation (which paid little); see Fyfe, "Conscientious Workmen or Booksellers' Hacks? The Professional Identities of Science Writers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," Isis, 2005, 96:192-223.
96. On Lyell's scientific authorship see James A. Secord's introduction to Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. ix-xliii.
97. see also Leonard G. Wilson, Lyell in America: Transatlantic Geology, 1841-1853 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 38-46, 158-166, 372-379.
98. Bache, "Address of Professor A. D. Bache" (cit. n. 42), p. xlix; and Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, p. 168. Bache envied the English for their "richly endowed universities" and the French for their "national institute." He wanted the AAAS to play an active role "in making, directing, or furnishing the means and appliances" for scientific research, and he urged the members to resist making the connection between centralization and a "monarchical institution": Bache, "Address of Professor A. D. Bache," p. li.
99. In addition to Rogers and Silliman, the editors also recommended David Wells and E. L. Youmans: "Scientific Lectures," Scientific American, 25 Sept. 1858, 14:21.
100. "Editor's Table," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1854, 8:411- 415, on p. 415
101. Bache, "Address of Professor A. D. Bache" (cit. n. 42), pp. xliv-xlv. On the "lecture system" more generally see Donald M. Scott, "The Profession That Vanished: Public Lecturing in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America," in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America, ed. Geison (cit. n. 4), pp. 12-28, on p. 12.
102. Joseph Henry could afford to pay only $25 per lecture at the Smithsonian Institution, a meager amount that caused some, such as Benjamin Silliman, Sr., to complain because he had expected to receive $30 per lecture plus expenses (the standard fee in New England). Despite the lesser compensation, Henry was able to recruit lecturers. See Henry to Benjamin Silliman, Sr., 8 Dec. 1851, in Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.8, ed. Rothenberg (cit. n. 41), pp. 265-267.
103. H. A. Newton, "Memoir of Elias Loomis, 1811-1889," Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 1890, pp. 213-252, esp. p. 238.
104. See also Louis I. Kuslan, "Benjamin Silliman, Jr.: The Second Silliman," in Benjamin Silliman and His Circle: The Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in America, ed. Leonard G. Wilson (New York: Science History Publications, 1979), pp. 158-205
105. "In aristocracies," he continued, "it is not exactly work itself which is despised, but work with an eye to profit": De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (cit. n. 12), pp. 550-551.
106. Lyell did not engage in consulting during his American visits, but neither did he demean American geologists who did. Other English geologists who visited did consult; see Hugh S. Torrens and William R. Brice, "James Buckman (1814 -1884), English Consulting Geologist, and His Visit to the Guyandotte Coal-Fields in 1854," Southeastern Geology, 1999, 35:191-201.
107. J. Peter Lesley to John A. Lowell, 20 May 1864, J. Peter Lesley Correspondence, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Lowell asked Lesley to deliver a series of lectures, which he did in the winter of 1865; they were later published as J. P. Lesley, Man's Origin and Destiny Sketched from the Platform of the Physical Sciences (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1868).
108. Public works projects were discredited as various states faced financial crises, the most spectacular of which was Pennsylvania's default on its loans in 1842. See Larson, Internal Improvement (cit. n. 28); and Gerstner, Henry Darwin Rogers (cit. n. 40).
109. Charles T. Jackson, "Remarks on Mining Operations, 1846," Charles T. Jackson Papers, Papers of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. The literature on the professionalization of American medicine is very large; one of the more popular accounts is Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York: Basic, 1982). The classic account remains Shryock, Medical Licensing in America (cit. n. 43).
110. It is interesting to note that "case" could refer to both a legal engagement and a physician's patient, but consulting geologists and chemists did not use the term.
111. In an earlier article on antebellum geologists, I was working within the old professionalization paradigm. I often described men of science as "professional scientists" and their capitalist patrons as "clients." See Paul Lucier, "Commercial Interests and Scientific Disinterestedness: Consulting Geologists in Antebellum America," Isis, 1995, 86:245-267.
112. Olcott's partner in the scheme was the publisher and prominent Whig Thurlow Weed. See James Hall to Ward Hunt, 20 Apr. 1846, James Hall Papers, New York State Library, Albany. A copy of his consulting report can be found in Box 39: Mining Reports, Hall Papers. On antebellum capitalists in general see Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995)
113. Throughout the nineteenth century, "professional chemists" were more common than "professional geologists"; I base this statement on a search for the keyword(s) "professional," "chemist," and "geologist" on Google Books Search, JSTOR, Cornell University's Making of America Journal Collection Web site, and the New York Times Web site. The most popular professional, however, was the engineer (again judging by the number of references), and it might be a worthwhile research project to find out when, where, and how the term "professional engineer" came into use in America.
114. Horsford gave up his Rumford Chair at Harvard in 1863 to concentrate on the company he founded, the Rumford Chemical Works, manufacturer of the
115. See also Louis I. Kuslan, "The Rise of the Yale School of Applied Chemistry," in Benjamin Silliman and His Circle, ed. Wilson (cit. n. 55), pp. 129-157; and Kuslan, "Benjamin Silliman, Jr." (cit. n. 55).
116. Such an overlap between chemistry and geology was not uncommon, given that much of surveying involved identifying rocks and formations (largely by mineral composition) and analyzing minerals and soils. Others in the chemistry/geology club included Jackson, Whitney, and Silliman, Jr. See Lucier, Scientists and Swindlers (cit. n. 19).
117. Flyer dated Philadelphia, 3 Mar. 1836, James Booth Papers, University of Delaware Library, Newark; and Patterson DuBois, "James Curtis Booth," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1888, 25:204- 211, on p. 205.
118. For further biographical information see Edgar Fahs Smith, "James Curtis Booth, Chemist, 1810-1888," Journal of Chemical Education, 1943, 20:315-318
119. Eric Paul Wittkopf, "James Curtis Booth: Chemistry in Antebellum Philadelphia" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Delaware, 1994).
120. See J. L. LeConte, "Memoir of John Fries Frazer, 1812-1872," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 1877, 1:245-256
121. Edgar Fahs Smith, "Martin Hans Boyé, 1812-1909," J. Chem. Educ., 1944, 21:7-11
122. Smith, Charles Mayer Wetherill, 1825-1871 (Easton, Pa., 1929); and George F. Barker, "Memoir of Frederick Augustus Genth, 1820-1893," Biogr. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1902, 4:201-231.
123. George Bacon, H. Meigs, F. S. Kinney, and Liv. Livingston, "Report on the American School of Mines," Transactions of the American Institute of the City of New-York, for the Year 1851 (1852), pp. 56-57.
124. For more on gas lighting see Lucier, Scientists and Swindlers (cit. n. 19), pp. 143-161.
125. John C. Cresson, professor of natural philosophy at the Franklin Institute, was the superintendent of the Philadelphia Gas Company; see Philadelphia Gas Works News, Special Centenary Number, 1836-1936 (Philadelphia, 1936).
126. The official title of Jackson and Hayes was "State Assayer of Ores and Metals."
127. In contrast, John Torrey held two federal government positions- Commissioner of the Mint (responsible for the annual assay of coinage) and assayer of the U.S. assay office in New York City. In 1849 Booth received a federal appointment as Melter and Refiner of the Mint.
128. Mitchel consulted for the Little Miami Railroad and the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. See "Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel" (cit. n. 52), p. 554.
129. Henry to Charles Wheatstone, 27 Feb. 1846, in Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.6, ed. Rothenberg (cit. n. 41), pp. 382-385, on p. 385.
130. The nature of Henry's information was (and is) a matter of some controversy. See Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.6, ed. Rothenberg, pp. 21-22
131. Henry's involvement with Morse also entangled him in several lawsuits; see Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.8, ed. Rothenberg (cit. n. 41), pp. xvii, 49-53.
132. Henry to James Rodney, 25 Mar. 1846, in Papers of Joseph Henry, ed. Rothenberg, Vol.6, pp. 399-405
133. see also pp. xxi-xxii. On 10 January 1850 Henry noted in his diary: "Received . . . for opinion relative to the application [of] a pretended new discovery-10 dol. The second fee I have received for a scientific advice." "Henry Desk Diary," in Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.8 (cit. n. 41), ed. Rothenberg, pp. 3-4, on p. 3.
134. Henry had received his first fee (amount unknown) for inspecting a magnetic telegraph for an unnamed "railway company." See Henry to Harriet Henry, 24 Dec. 1845, in Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.6, ed. Rothenberg, pp. xxii, 344.
135. Benjamin Green to Henry, 9 May 1849, in The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.7: January 1847-December 1849: The Smithsonian Years, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), pp. 526-527
136. see also Amos Dean to Henry, June 1848, ibid., pp. 350-352.
137. Henry, "Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science" (cit. n. 41), p. 90; and Bache, "Address of Professor A. D. Bache" (cit. n. 42), p. xlviii. On Henry's vision of the relations between science and industry see Arthur Molella and Nathan Reingold, "Theorists and Ingenious Mechanics: Joseph Henry Defines Science," Science Studies, 1973, 3:323-351.
138. According to Robert K. Merton (and all who have followed his sociology, including most historians of the professionalization of science), universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism are the four institutional imperatives of modern science. These norms, combined with the fact that "the scientist does not stand vis-à-vis a lay clientele," considerably reduce the likelihood of fraud and quackery: Merton, "The Normative Structure of Science," in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 267-278, esp. pp. 276-277.
139. Henry, "Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science" (cit. n. 41), pp. 97, 93. Quacks, Henry insisted, were readily identifiable by their appeals "directly to the public through newspapers." He was not an absolutist on this point ("I do not say that the name of a man of science should never appear in the public papers"), but he was very wary ("it is proper that it should occasionally so appear"): ibid., p. 94.
140. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (cit. n. 12), p. 551.
141. J. D. Whitney, The Metallic Wealth of the United States, Described and Compared with That of Other Countries (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1854), pp. xxvii-xxviii.
142. Lesley to Hall, 27 Feb. 1865; and John Strong Newberry to William H. Gaylord, 16 July 1868: James Hall Papers, New York State Archives, Albany. Newberry's comments were offered in the context of an inquiry into the funding (i.e., salaries) of the members of the second geological survey of Ohio, of which he was the director.
143. "Corruption may be ubiquitous in American history, but it thrived [during] Reconstruction": Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 384.
144. See also Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993)
145. For more on science and oil see Lucier, Scientists and Swindlers (cit. n. 19). For the early industry see Ron Chernov, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller (New York: Random House, 1998). The classic muckraking account is always worth citing and consulting: Ida M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company, 2 vols. (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904).
146. The controversy is often mentioned as a prime example of the problems Whitney faced with the California Geological Survey. See, e.g., Merrill, First One Hundred Years of American Geology (cit. n. 29), pp. 407-411
147. Gerald D. Nash, "The Conflict between Pure and Applied Science in Nineteenth-Century Public Policy: The California State Geological Survey, 1860-1874," Isis, 1963, 54:217-228
148. This might be called the "delay thesis," which explains why California, with its rich oil fields, did not take off sooner. See, e.g., Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 81.
149. The petroleum geologist Edgar Wesley Owen blamed Whitney's "absurd performance" for California's early oil bust: Owen, Trek of Oil Finders (Tulsa, Okla.: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1975), pp. 74-75.
150. For more on the California oil industry see White, Formative Years in the Far West: A History of Standard Oil Company of California and Predecessors through 1919 (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962)
151. Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, pp. 315-316.
152. Rexmond C. Cochrane, oddly enough, considered the Silliman-Whitney controversy a struggle of right versus wrong that simply led to unrest; see Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1973 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978), pp. 120-121.
153. Josiah Whitney to the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 Oct. 1873, William D. Whitney Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
154. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., to Julius E. Hilgard (Home Secretary), 10 Feb. 1874, Silliman-Whitney Controversy, National Academy Sciences Archives, Washington, D.C.
155. [E. L. Godkin], "The True History of a Great Mining Enterprise," Nation, 18 Dec. 1873, 17:402- 404.
156. E. L. Godkin, "Commercial Immorality and Political Corruption," North Amer. Rev., 1868, 107:248 -266, on p. 248.
157. See also Summers, Era of Good Stealings (cit. n. 84), pp. 166-179
158. John G. Sproat, "The Best Men": Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968).
159. Council Minutes, 31 Dec. 1874, Silliman-Whitney Controversy, National Academy of Sciences Archives. Whitney and his brother William resigned from the academy.
160. Rowland, "Plea for Pure Science" (cit. n. 1), p. 242.
161. Reingold thought there was no point in talking about "professional science" until after 1860: Reingold, "Definitions and Speculations" (cit. n. 3), pp. 29-39.
162. Bruce pinpointed the establishment of national patterns and institutions of science to 1876, the birth year of the Johns Hopkins University, "an epochal date in the history of the scientific enterprise in America": Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, p. 338.
163. John Servos located the rapid rise of American science-depending on field-to the decades between 1870 and 1930: Servos, "Mathematics and the Physical Sciences in America, 1880-1930," Isis, 1986, 77:611-629.
164. George H. Daniels, "The Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture," Science, 1967, 156:1699 -1705, on p. 1700.
165. Daniels was not the only one. David A. Hollinger identified relative autonomy as a new and important condition of the American scientific community. "No aspect of the social history of science in the nineteenth century is more familiar today than the formation, by many groups of scientists, of self-regulating societies more exclusive and autonomous than other voluntary societies": Hollinger, "Inquiry and Uplift: Late NineteenthCentury American Academics and the Moral Efficacy of Scientific Practice," in Authority of Experts, ed. Haskell (cit. n. 4), pp. 142-156, on p. 147.
166. Daniels, "Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture," p. 1701; and Hollinger, "Inquiry and Uplift," p. 152. Bruce put it more succinctly: "To the public mind, science begat technology." Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science, p. 356.
167. Daniel J. Kevles, Jeffrey L. Sturchio, and P. Thomas Carroll thought 1880 was a reasonable date by which certain disciplines- namely, the earth sciences, natural history, and astronomy-had reached respectability: Kevles, Sturchio, and Carroll, "The Sciences in America, circa 1880," Science, 1980, 209:27-32.
168. According to Daniels, "by the last quarter of the century such applications [of theoretical science] were so obvious that it was no longer necessary to make a point of them." He pointed to the contributions of geology to mining and of chemistry to the chemical industry-in other words, to the professional or consulting men of science, not to some direct link between pure geology or pure chemistry and industry. See Daniels, "Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture," p. 1701.
169. Historians in the "pure science" camp have always had a tricky time connecting the moral and material efficacy of late nineteenth-century American science. Most fall back on the crutch that pure science paid off, at some distant point in the future, in the form of technology. See, e.g., Hollinger, "Inquiry and Uplift"; and Daniel J. Kevles, "American Science," in Professions in American History, ed. Hatch (cit. n. 2), pp. 107-125.
170. For at least a generation, historians of technology have skillfully disassembled whatever support the conveyer-belt model had. The pure does not inexorably lead to the applied. On the relations between science and technology see John M. Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), Ch. 3; and Ronald Kline, "Construing 'Technology' as 'Applied Science': Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers in the United States, 1880- 1945," Isis, 1995, 86:194-221.
171. "Each one of these institutions has so-called professors," Rowland explained, "but it is evident that they can be only of the grade of teachers": Rowland, "Plea for Pure Science" (cit. n. 1), pp. 244-245.
172. Ibid., p. 242. Regarding the first-class universities see ibid., p. 245: "To call any institution a university which has less than $1,000,000, is to render it absurd in the face of the world."
173. According to Daniels, the pure-science ideology was "in utter conflict" with prevailing political, religious, and cultural assumptions: Daniels, "Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture" (cit. n. 97), p. 1704.
174. This article dealt mostly with Silliman's role in the Emma Mine affair, but it was the source of Whitney's numbers for Silliman's fees. Godkin did not retract this article after Silliman threatened to sue. Bowles did: [Editorial], Springfield Republican, 4 Mar. 1874.
175. Rowland's inclusion of physicists suggests that the commercial relations of that discipline had changed dramatically with the introduction of "telegraphs, electric lights, and such conveniences": Rowland, "Plea for Pure Science" (cit. n. 1), pp. 244, 242.
176. Significantly, Rowland had firsthand knowledge of the tight grip of commercial science. See David A. Hounshell, "Edison and the Pure Science Ideal in Nineteenth-Century America," Science, 1980, 207:612-617
177. Susan W. Morris, "Resource Networks: Industrial Research in Small Enterprises" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 2003).
178. Rowland, "Plea for Pure Science," pp. 242, 244, 246.
179. [William Whewell], Quarterly Review, 1834, 51:58-61; cited in Ross, "Scientist" (cit. n. 17), pp. 71, 76.
180. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, "Address," Proc. Amer. Assoc. Advance. Sci., 1869, 18:1-37, on p. 9; and Ross, "Scientist," p. 73.
181. The first appearance of the word "scientist" in public print that I have found thus far was in "The Dudley Observatory Controversy," New York Times, 16 Aug. 1858. In that article, Gould was twice identified as a "scientist" and harshly characterized as insufferably conceited and arrogant; it was "beneath his dignity to be familiar on matters of science with commercial, money-making men." The next appearance of the word was in a review of Joseph Worcester, A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan & Brewer, 1860), in which the anonymous reviewer noted that the neologism "scientist" was "a useful recent addition to the English language": "New Publications" New York Times, 26 May 1860.
182. The best history of the controversy remains James, Elites in Conflict (cit. n. 14). This can be supplemented with The Papers of Joseph Henry, esp. Vol.10, January 1858-December 1865: The Smithsonian Years, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004), which includes many of the key primary documents.
183. Gould, "Address" (cit. n. 105), p. 9. Between 1 Sept. 1851 and 31 Dec. 1870, the word "scientist" appeared in the New York Times on only 12 occasions. During the next decade (1 Jan. 1871 through 31 Dec. 1880), it appeared 174 times. Between 1860 and 1869, Scientific American used the word "scientist" about once a year, usually as a synonym for disciplinary identities such as "chemist," "naturalist," "geologist," or "physicist." The term was something of an empty placeholder; it carried none of the particular connotations about duties toward science or society or the descriptions about temperament or talents that Gould imparted during his AAAS address. For the view that the Dudley Observatory affair was a critical moment in the professionalization process see James, Elites in Conflict, pp. 4, 12.
184. Ibid., pp. 29, 19. Further, "In all this broad land I know of not half a dozen positions, the duties of which may be discharged and a subsistence earned by prosecuting scientific research" (p. 15).
185. The presidential address was reprinted as J. Lawrence Smith, "Science in America and Modern Methods of Science," American Naturalist, 1873, 7:577- 602; for the quotations see pp. 582, 579.
186. Rowland, "Plea for Pure Science" (cit. n. 1), p. 246. This was a crucial point that Rowland felt needed to be emphasized: "As I remarked before, the investigator in pure science is usually a professor" (p. 247). He did, however, have to admit: "That teaching is important, goes without saying" (p. 244).
187. For a nuanced analysis of the purity of pure science see Rebecca M. Herzig, Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2005), pp. 47-63.
188. Daniels, "Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture" (cit. n. 97); Servos, "Mathematics and the Physical Sciences in America" (cit. n. 96); Robert E. Kohler, "The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base," Isis, 1990, 81:638-662.
189. The presidential address was reprinted as J. Peter Lesley, "The President's Address," Science, 1885, 6:168 -177; for the quotations see pp. 174, 176.
190. Ibid., pp. 175, 170-171.
191. John S. Billings, "Scientific Men and Their Duties," Science, 1886, 8:541-551, on pp. 543, 544, 542.
192. Authorized in July 1884, this special House-Senate investigation was named after its chair, William B. Allison, a Republican from Iowa who also chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Allison Commission was set up to investigate waste and overlap in government scientific bureaus, principally the Signal Service, the Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department. See A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities, reprint ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1986), Ch. 11.
193. The glaring exception in Agassiz's argument was the Coast Survey. Both he and his father had had a close working relationship with Bache and, later, J. E. Hilgard. Agassiz in fact defended Hilgard and the survey; see Alexander Agassiz, "The Coast-Survey and 'Political Scientists,'" Science, 1885, 6:253-255.
194. Agassiz did not use the terms "scientist" (he preferred "men of science") or "pure science"; "scientist" had appeared in an article in the New York Evening Post, to which he was responding.
195. Louis Agassiz founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard in 1859. After his death in December 1873 Alexander took over as curator, a position he held until 1885. Over his lifetime, Alexander Agassiz gave more than a million dollars to the museum. See Mary P. Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1991).
196. See Wyndham D. Miles, A History of the National Library of Medicine: The Nation's Treasury of Medical Knowledge (Bethesda, Md.: National Library of Medicine, 1982). Much of the book (Chs. 3-12) is about Billings's government career.
197. Senior government officials, such as the head of the Coast Survey and the secretary of the Smithsonian, made as much. Billings, however, did not have a $5,000 per annum government salary. In fact, he needed to supplement his income by lecturing at Yale and Columbia. See S. Weir Mitchell, "John Shaw Billings, 1838-1913," and Fielding H. Garrison, "The Scientific Work of Dr. John Shaw Billings," both in Biogr. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1917, 8, pp. 375-383 and 385-416; and Garrison, John Shaw Billings: A Memoir (New York: Putnam, 1915).
198. Powell's testimony is cited in On the Organization of Scientific Work of the General Government, Pt. 2: Additional Statements (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1886), pp. 1077-1078, 1082.
199. See also "In Defense of His Bureau: Prof. Powell, of the Geological Survey, Replies to Prof. Agassiz," New York Times, 15 Mar. 1886. For more on Powell's testimony before the Allison Commission see Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 424-436.
200. Billings was acutely aware of the pressures Powell and other bureau chiefs were under: "From my individual point of view . . . scientific men connected with [government] are subject to criticism from two very different stand-points. On the one hand are scientists calling for investigations which shall increase knowledge without special reference to utility. . . . On the other hand is the demand from the business men's point of view, -that they shall show practical results." Billings, "Scientific Men and Their Duties" (cit. n. 116), p. 544.
201. Ibid., pp. 543, 544, 543.
202. The editors' comments appeared in a response to a letter by T. L. Sclater of the Zoological Society of London. Sclater asked the journal not to use the word "scientist" but to use the shorter and more correct term "scient," which was already well known from such words as "omniscient" and "prescient." See "A Plea for Scient," Science, 1897, 6:63. As Sydney Ross noted, the presumed American origin of "scientist" militated against its adoption in Britain: Ross, "Scientist" (cit. n. 17), p. 76.
203. "Cooperation in Science," Science, 1880, 1:30-31.
204. A scientist was "a person versed in or devoted to science." Interestingly, Whitney cited Whewell, not Gould, as the source of the word. He also noted two synonyms: "scientician" and "sciencist." See entries for "Profession/al," "Science," and "Scientist" in Whitney, Century Dictionary (cit. n. 14).
205. A search for "professional scientist" in JSTOR during the period 1850-1900 (conducted in March 2008) turned up only two references besides the 1880 Science editorial. On Google Books Search, there were fewer than two hundred initial hits, and the actual number of references was under a hundred because of duplication. Most of these were to medical, legal, or educational books, and many, interestingly enough, were to British sources, where the counterpart was the "amateur." Among the very few American scientific references was an early article by Joseph Henry. In a discussion of agriculture, Henry noted that commercial farmers need not become "professional scientists" in order to profit from chemical fertilizers: Henry, "Meteorology in its Connection with Agriculture," Senate Executive Document, 35th Cong., 1st Sess. (1857-1858), pp. 419-551, on p. 420. Still, these few references to "professional scientist" show that the term was not completely unknown.
206. See also Magali Sarfatti Larson, "Expertise and Expert Power," in Authority of Experts, ed. Haskell (cit. n. 4), pp. 28-80.
207. Jim Endersby concluded that it was "impossible to impose a workable definition of 'professional' on Victorian men of science" and argued for analyses of "the terms that were in use at the time": Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 26-27
208. Ruth Barton, "'Men of Science': Language, Identity, and Professionalization in the Mid-Victorian Scientific Community," History of Science, 2003, 41:73-119
209. Barton, "'An Influential Set of Chaps': The X Club and Royal Society Politics, 1864-1885," British Journal for the History of Science, 1990, 23:53-81.
210. Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 (1987; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988) (hereafter cited as Bruce, Launching of Modern American Science).
211. Rather than acknowledging the volume as a high-water mark of social history, some historians thought Bruce drowned his analysis in unnecessary details. See Stuart W. Leslie, "Communities of Nineteenth-Century Science and Technology," Rev. Amer. Hist., 1989, 17:232-237
212. Hugh Richard Slotten, Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), esp. Ch. 2.
213. Slotten, "The Dilemmas of Science in the United States: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey," Isis, 1993, 84:26-49, esp. p. 26.
214. In the new preface to a reprint of American Science in the Age of Jackson, Daniels characterized Jeffersonian science as a "disorganized group of amateurs," in contrast to the "professional body" of Jacksonian science: George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson, reprint ed. (Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1994), pp. ix-xviii, on p. xiii.
215. The Rensselaer school, the first scientific school in the nation, was founded in November 1824. It changed its name in 1832 to Rensselaer Institute and in 1861 became Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. See Samuel Rezneck, Education for a Technological Society: A Sesquicentennial History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1968).
216. Eaton was employed only by Rensselaer, and his surveys of Albany and Rensselaer counties embraced much of Rensselaer's manor. See Michele L. Aldrich, New York State Natural History Survey, 1836-1842: A Chapter in the History of American Science (Ithaca, N.Y.: Paleontological Research Institute, 2000), pp. 10-13.
217. Margaret C. Jacob and Stewart, Practical Matter: Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687 - 1851 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004).
218. Rensselaer was also a leading proponent of the Erie Canal and the president of New York's canal commission between 1825 (the completion of the canal) and 1839 (his death): [Editorial,] Amer. J. Sci., 1828, 14:360.
219. Walter B. Hendrickson, "Nineteenth-Century State Geological Surveys: Early Government Support of Science," Isis, 1961, 52:357-371.
220. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1951). Significantly, neither Larson nor Taylor had much to say about science; conversely, Robert Bruce had little to say about internal improvement or the transportation revolution in Launching of Modern American Science.
221. For an older explanation of the rise of professional geology in Britain see Secord, Controversy in Victorian Geology (cit. n. 6), pp. 202-214.
222. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (1994) (cit. n. 23), p. 24.
223. Aldrich, New York State Natural History Survey; and Paul Lucier, "A Plea for Applied Geology," Hist. Sci., 1999, 37:283-318.
224. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science (cit. n. 33); Barton, "'Huxley, Lubbock, and Half a Dozen Others'" (cit. n. 11); and Barton, "'An Influential Set of Chaps'" (cit. n. 11). In the old models of professionalization the call for reform was treated as indicative of the institutional stage-a point in the development where "scientists" drew a boundary between themselves and all the others. In British historiography, that boundary was often drawn between "professionals" and "amateurs."
225. In addition to his talks at the Lowell Institute, Lyell also presented public lectures in New York City. Oddly enough, he was not very good at it. See Robert H. Dott, "Lyell in America-His Lectures, Field Work, and Mutual Influences, 1841-1852," Earth Sciences History, 1996, 15:101-140
226. Agassiz made roughly $1,400 in New York City and presumably as much in Charleston. In January 1848 he took up a professorship specially created for him at Harvard. See Lurie, Louis Agassiz (cit. n. 39), pp. 122-145.
227. On Mitchel's success see "Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, 1809-1862," Science, 1943, 98:553-554.
228. "Editor's Easy Chair," ibid., 1855, 10:693-704, on p. 696
229. E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (New York: Free Press, 1979); and Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power before the Civil War (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1973).
230. In Britain, some prominent gentlemanly geologists were actively involved in consulting; see Jack Morrell, John Phillips and the Business of Victorian Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
231. In his discussion of American professionals' middle-class authority and independence, Bledstein used the example of the mining engineer, who "surveyed the ground, studied the geology, assayed a representative sample of the ore, etc.": Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism (cit. n. 3), pp. 87-88.
232. Margaret W. Rossiter, "A Portrait of James Dwight Dana," ibid., pp. 104-127.
233. Herbert Hovenkamp, Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991).
234. William Wright, The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865), p. 243.
235. In 1865 Frank Storer became the professor of general and industrial chemistry, and Cyrus Warren became the professor of organic chemistry, at the newly founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See Samuel C. Prescott, When M.I.T. Was "Boston Tech," 1861-1916 (Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press, 1954).
236. Mary C. Rabbitt, Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defense and General Welfare, Vol.2: 1879-1904 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), pp. 114-126
237. Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1965).
238. Foner, Reconstruction (cit. n. 84), pp. 488-499.
239. "Editor's Table," ibid., 1856, 14:122-125, on p. 124.
240. William H. Hutchinson, Oil, Land, and Politics: The California Career of Thomas Robert Bard (Norman: Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1965).
241. Gerald T. White, Scientists in Conflict: The Beginnings of the Oil Industry in California (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1968), pp. 207-231.
242. "Sketch of Benjamin Silliman," Popular Science Monthly, 1880, 16:550 -553, on p. 551.
243. he chose the term "expertise." Similarly, the subject of the "professionalization of science" was repeatedly discussed in the first six volumes of The Papers of Joseph Henry (published between 1972 and 1992).
244. but in the last five volumes (published between 1996 and 2007) "professionalization" does not appear. See The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol.12: Cumulative Index, comp.
245. Kathleen W. Dorman (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2008). For a recent attempt to classify different types of expertise see Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007).
246. William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: Knopf, 1966), pp. 379-389.
247. Paul Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 28-30.
248. Dupree, Science in the Federal Government (cit. n. 117), pp. 224-231.
249. For the twentieth century see Robert H. Kargon, ed., The Making of American Science: A Portrait of Science in Public Life Drawn from the Presidential Addresses of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1920-1970 (Washington, D.C.: AAAS, 1974).
250. In addition, contemporary newspaper and journal articles about the American scientific community were searched for particular words (such as "scientist" or "professional") or combinations of words ("professional scientist" or "consulting geologist"); these sources are available on the World Wide Web at sites such Google Books Search and JSTOR or by looking up particular newspapers, such as the New York Times.
251. Hollinger explained the pure-science elitism as a moral stance that was