Page 374 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

scientific instruments 1675

more important: They provide a source of knowledge sphere, which models the structure and motions of the
about people and their scientific activities that is outside heavens. However, even such apparently intrinsically sci-
written records and therefore accessible to scholars in entific instruments can be used for symbolic or religious
cases where the evidence is otherwise somewhat thin or purposes wider than the strictly “scientific.” Other objects
even completely lost. might have the status of “scientific instrument” only tem-
porarily, such as the stick in the ground. Here we have
Questions gone far beyond the first explicit definition of the term
These few examples show the diversity of ways by which scientific instrument, proposed by the Scottish physicist
people have used instruments to consider the natural James Clerk Maxwell in 1876: “Everything which is
world and the ways in which some scholars have studied required in order to make an experiment is called Appa-
them. Instruments can relate to the underlying scientific ratus. A piece of apparatus constructed specially for the
framework and practices in various ways. Therefore, the performance of experiments is called an Instrument”
problems identified by Warner and by Van Helden and (Maxwell 1876, 1).
Hankins loom larger when we consider scientific instru- We have perhaps gone too far for the comfort of some
ments as part of world history. After all, what is to count museum curators because allowing objects to temporar-
as a “scientific instrument” when the very category of “sci- ily have the status of “scientific instruments” brings in
ence” is opened up to include all the ways by which peo- huge numbers of objects that have thus far not been col-
ple measure, predict, and tell others about the natural lected or studied as such. If this definition is pushed to its
world? The term is loaded with Western ideals about the limits, curators such as Warner will have even greater
rational, impartial approach to the problems determining what is to
natural world, which might be dif- count as a scientific instrument
ficult to reconcile with other peo- and therefore what kinds of
ples’ ways of considering the objects to collect. People inter-
heavens, the rocks, or the seas. A ested in how humans look at the
stick in the ground might be just natural world and how objects
that, but a stick in the ground and instruments relate to that
casts a shadow, and if someone activity, though, are less con-
uses the track of that shadow to strained by the practical and phys-
measure the passage of time or ical problems of conservation and
the seasons, that stick becomes a storage, and such a broad defini-
sundial or a calendar. Should we tion is perhaps less problematic. It
then call it a “scientific instru- might be even beneficial because it
ment”? Should a museum include opens our eyes to the different
that stick in its collection of scien- approaches that humans have
tific instruments? If it did, what taken to understanding the natural
other information should it record world and the various roles that
about the ways by which the stick instruments have played in these
was used so that the link between activities.
object and practice is not lost?
Catherine Eagleton
Some objects might be classi- Telescope equipment in the
fied as scientific instruments all Paris Observatory in the early See also Museums; Science-
the time—such as an armillary twentieth century. Overview; Scientific Revolution