[E&E seminars] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, April 9, 2010

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History

"Observing Nature at the Edges: British Naturalists on the Shore during the Napoleonic Wars"

Anne Secord
University of Cambridge

During twenty two years of military action against France the British developed near-obsessive habits of watchfulness.  Fear of infiltration by spies and invasion by the French combined with worries about deceptions by fellow citizens to produce regimes of vigilance and surveillance.  This watchfulness extended to the study of nature, especially of organisms such as seaweeds, which did not form readily perceived natural families.  British marine botanists quelled taxonomic anxiety by adopting a cautious empiricism based on scrutiny; they ascertained "true appearances" through both self-surveillanceand the continual appraisal of other observers.

Friday, April 9, 2010
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge

Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society.  For more information or to be put on the mailing list contact mcollett at mit.edu.
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