History of Science

Chang, Pang-Yen

2024 History of Science

doi: 10.1177/00732753241235432pmid: 38494628

This article examines the rise and decline of the enthusiasm for intelligence testing in early twentieth-century China, focusing on the appeal, the challenges, and the critiques revolving around this psychological instrument. The introduction of intelligence testing reflected not only China’s urgent needs in modernizing its merit system, but also Chinese psychologists’ aspirations for pursuing exactitude and redefining the racial characteristics of their compatriots against foreign interpretations. But despite psychologists’ endeavors, the political and geographical fragmentation of Republican China troubled the epistemic imperative of uniformity demanded by Euro-American psychometrics and therefore undermined the validity of measurement. Subsequently, the legitimacy of intelligence testing began to be questioned by several influential Chinese psychologists in the late 1920s and 30s. The difficulties in standardization and the hostility within the psychology community formed a vicious cycle, impeding the progress of nationwide testing. Through this history, the article demonstrates not only the elevation of measurement to epistemic authority in modern China, but also how its promise was challenged by a diverse and rapidly changing society.

Amery, Fiona

2024 History of Science

doi: 10.1177/00732753241229147pmid: 38494601

There existed a tradition of mimetic experimentation in the late nineteenth century, whereby morphologists sought to scale down sublime natural phenomena to tabletop devices in the laboratory. Experimenters constructed analogs of the aurora, attempting to replicate the colors and forms of the phenomenon with discharge tube experiments and electrical displays, which became popular spectacles at London’s public galleries. This paper analyses a closely allied but different kind of imitation. Between 1872 and 1884, Professor Karl Selim Lemström (1838–1904) attempted to reproduce the aurora borealis in all of its complexity atop four mountains in northern Finland. Crucially, his “artificial aurora” was to materialize at the same scale as the original phenomenon and in its natural habitat in the polar atmosphere. With his experiment Lemström hoped to uncover the workings of the aurora and the electrical currents that he believed were always present within the atmosphere; his epistemological framework was one of learning by making. This paper sheds light on the broader problem of what it meant to authentically replicate a phenomenon that remained largely enigmatic, and, most importantly, how this replication could be verified. This prompts a discussion as to whether model experiments needed only to appear visually similar to the objects they purported to imitate, were required to preserve their form, or needed to be materially identical in order to the original to be identified as legitimate “reproductions” in the late nineteenth century.

Holmes, Matthew

2024 History of Science

doi: 10.1177/00732753241235433pmid: 38504594

In the mid-nineteenth century, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) was introduced to the United States, quickly spreading across the country. For a brief period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the observation of sparrow behavior was something of an urban pastime. Traits such as intelligence, reason, persistence, and craftsmanship were conferred onto sparrows by American urbanites. This paper argues that sparrow intelligence was often conflated with domestication: the ability of the birds to adapt to living alongside humans. Praise for the ingenuity of sparrows generally revolved around their nest building, particularly when such structures overcame the challenges posed by urban infrastructure and technology. Sparrows were far less praiseworthy when they caused electricity outages or contaminated water supplies. The sparrow in the United States demonstrates how the relationship between these anecdotes and their implications for animal minds was mediated by the technology and infrastructure of cities. Admirers of sparrows were not measuring the birds’ mental capacity, but rather their ability to adapt to human habitations. Sparrows were only granted intelligence once they had demonstrated their ability to become domesticated.

Daum, Andreas W.

2024 History of Science

doi: 10.1177/00732753241252478pmid: 38770782

This article investigates why Humboldtian Science, as a heuristic concept, has gained prominence in the historiography of science and requires clarification. It offers an ideal-type model of comparative research and exact measurements across vast spaces, which Susan F. Cannon and others tied to Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Yet, he himself was less “Humboldtian” than this concept suggests. The article proposes to disentangle Humboldtian Science from Humboldt’s science, which constituted a set of individual research practices that defied the ideal of precision. Humboldt’s science was often impromptu, marked by epistemological and personal insecurities, and embedded in the protagonist’s peripatetic way of living and frequently erratic writing style. Historicizing Humboldt’s science undermines the exceptionalism that elevates the Prussian savant above his contemporaries and casts him as a singular figure. This critical reflection encourages biographical approaches to the history of science, balancing heuristic generalizations and attention to individual research styles.

Ileri, Nurcin

2024 History of Science

doi: 10.1177/00732753231211175pmid: 38343061

This article focuses on the earlier encounters and uses of electricity, its technology, and its infrastructure to understand how electricity formed a contested terrain of politics among the city’s varying actors, such as state officials, financial investors, and consumers, in late Ottoman Istanbul, roughly between the 1870s and early 1920s. I contend that people used electricity as a political tool in their everyday lives even before they could access it physically. Electricity skepticism during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909) increased Istanbul residents’ inclination for an electrified future; the longer the sultan’s prohibitions lasted, the more they fueled this inclination, causing problems about the use of electricity. In contrast to the previous regime’s skepticism about electricity use, the Committee of Union and Progress (1909–18) administrators considered electricity a public service that a larger population could use rather than a source of energy for a small, privileged elite. The first urban-scale power plant was completed in 1914. However, the inability to import technical equipment and raw materials due to political and financial troubles caused by World War I (1914–18) and the Occupation Period (1918–23) hampered electricity production and consumption, causing serious problems in electricity use on public and private scales. Amid the wave of challenges, the city inhabitants witnessed numerous unpleasant encounters with electricity use; some perished in tram accidents, while others became criminals. At a time when much of society viewed electricity as a vital element for progress and economic growth, the prevalence of crowded trams, tram accidents, blackouts, and instances of electricity theft within the Ottoman capital called into question the notion of electricity as a technological promise and public good. Consequently, the initial enthusiasm for electricity’s transformative potential waned due to tensions between expectations and daily realities, resulting in a cautious approach toward technological modernity.