The Dictionary of Human Geography

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the geographiesofinstrumentation. The use of

survey instruments and the regulation of

observers in the production of geographical

knowledge can be thought of as an inherently

spatial strategy; it aims to conquer distance

by bringing together widely distributed data

and thereby integrating local knowledge into

globalnetworks. Just exactly what goes on

as instrumental findings circulate from local

site to global space constitutes a crucial set of

questions in the geography of knowledge.

During theenlightenment, ships’ captains

collected magnetic measurements and

returned them to the Royal Society. In the

nineteenth century, atmospheric circulation

data returned from hundreds of ships to the

US Navy’s Depot Charts and Instruments

were used by Matthew Fontaine Maury to

construct his 1855Physical geography of the

sea(Burnett, 2005). At such key venues –

centres of calculation, as Bruno Latour

(1987) calls them – universality is constructed

from particularity. But that conceptual cir-

cuitry is only achieved by industrious labour

and careful management. The need to cali-

brate instruments, to normalizefieldwork,

to discipline the senses of observers and to

ensure metrological standardization are all

procedures that are needed to turn instrumen-

tal readings in particular places into geograph-

ical patterns of worldwide scope (Livingstone,

2003c). And of course the standardized data,

calibrated apparatus and normalized proced-

ures that emerge from centralized nodes in the

network are themselves, in turn, ‘assimilated

and interpreted in each local context’

(Golinski, 1998, pp. 138–9). It is therefore

noteworthy that historians of science have

begun to speak of the ‘geography of precision’

(Schaffer, 2002), which identifies the inher-

ently geographical nature of instrumental epis-

temology and the means by which ‘universal

knowledge’ is made out of ‘local knowledges’

(seeindigenous knowledge). Further geo-

graphical scrutiny of the role of instrumental

practice in the production of (geographical)

knowledge is urgently needed. dl

Suggested reading

Bourguet, Licoppe and Sibum (2002); Living-

stone (2003c).

scientific revolution(s) An abrupt cognitive

transformation in a tradition of scientific

enquiry that radically reinterprets existing

data, identifies new problems and methodolo-

gies, and establishes fertile lines of novel

enquiry. By thus emphasizing discontinuities

in the history ofscience, the idea of scientific

revolutions runs counter to the standard

cumulative understanding long championed

by positivists and others who insisted that sci-

entific progress comes about through the

inductive accumulation of new data and the

routine application of scientific method (see

logical positivism;positivism). While the

idea of scientific revolutions was put forward

in the mid-nineteenth century by William

Whewell, its most celebrated advocate was

Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 account, The

structure of scientific revolutions, advanced a

mechanism for understanding revolutionary

science. To Kuhn, scientific fields embody

paradigms– traditions with historical exem-

plars that express the standard theories, con-

cepts and practices of a particular science. At

certain points in time a new paradigm arises

which is incompatible, and incommensurable,

with its predecessor on account of the truly

radical nature of the transformation. Kuhn’s

model has been challenged from various quar-

ters, and while he himself insisted that it was

not applicable to the social sciences, it has

nonetheless been applied in various ways to

the evolution ofhuman geographyand, most

notably, by the architects of thequantitative

revolutionthat inauguratedspatial science

(Mair, 1986; see alsogeography, history of).

But the term may also refer to a particular

period in Western history, conventionally

described as ‘The Scientific Revolution’,

which has been widely regarded as of pivotal

significance in the emergence of modern sci-

ence. The expression was introduced in the

1930s to give unity to the period centring on

the seventeenth and early eighteenth centur-

ies, when figures such as Galileo, Rene ́

Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon,

Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton trans-

formed natural philosophy by their application

of mathematical principles and experimental

methods to understandingnature. Favouring

mechanical explanations, such figures cham-

pioned first-hand observation of nature over

the scholastic authority of figures such as

Aristotle. This typification of ‘the scientific

revolution’, however, has been challenged

more recently by scholars stressing continu-

ities with medieval metaphysics, diversities of

outlook exhibited by key figures in the period

and the continuing influence of a variety of

magical perspectives on practitioners of the

new natural philosophy. This has led some

historians to query whether there ever really

was such a thing as ‘the’ scientific revolution.

As Shapin (1996, p. 1) audaciously put it in

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 669 1.4.2009 3:23pm

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION(S)