Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science

Description

Research records composed of notes and protocols have long played a role in the efforts to understand the origins of what have come to be seen as the established milestones in the development of modern science. The use of research records to probe the nature of scientific investigation itself however is a recent development in the history of science. With Eduard Dijksterhuis, we could address them as a veritable "epistemologiCal laboratory". The purpose of a workshop entitled "Reworking the Bench: Laboratory Notebooks in the History of Science", held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was to bring together historians who have been exploiting such resources, to compare the similarities and differences in the materials they had used and and to measure the potential and scope for future explorations of "science in the making" based on such forms of documentation. The contributions which form this volume are based on papers presented at this workshop or written afterward by participants in the discussions. This is the first book that addresses the issue of research notes for writing history of science in a comprehensive manner. Its case studies range from the early modern period to present and cover a broad range of different disciplines. The Hanging Chain: A Forgotten “Discovery” Buried in Galileo’s Notes on Mition....Pages 1-24 The Chymical Laboratory Notebooks of George Starkey....Pages 25-41 Newton’s Optical Notebooks: Public Versus Private Data....Pages 43-65 At Play with Nature: Luigi Galvani’s Experimental Approach to Muscular Physiology....Pages 67-92 The Practice of Studying Practice: Analyzing Research Records of Ampère and Faraday....Pages 93-118 From Agents to Cells: Theodor Schwann’s Research Notes of the Years 1835–1838....Pages 119-140 Narrating by Numbers: Keeping an Account of Early 19th Century Laboratory Experiences....Pages 141-158 Exploring Contents and Boundaries of Experimental Practice in Laboratory Notebooks: Samuel Pierpont Langley and the Mapping of the Infra-Red Region of the Solar Spectrum....Pages 159-182 The Pocket Schedule....Pages 183-202 From Lone Investigator to Laboratory Chief: Ivan Pavlov’s Research Notebooks as a Reflection of His Managerial and Interpretive Style....Pages 203-220 Carl Correns’ Experiments with Pisum, 1896–1899....Pages 221-252 Errors and Insights: Reconstructing the Genesis of General Relativity from Einstein’s Zurich Notebook....Pages 253-268 Hans Krebs’ and Kurt Henseleit’s Laboratory Notebooks and Their Discovery of the Urea Cycle-Reconstructed with Computer Models....Pages 269-294 Laboratory Notebooks and Investigative Pathways....Pages 295-308 The Scholar’s Seeing Eye....Pages 309-325