Putting Science in Its Place by Livingstone David N

Author:Livingstone, David N. [Livingstone, David N.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: 9780226487229
Published: 2014-03-02T14:24:11.900000+00:00

27.A section from the topographical map of Paris and environs from the Carte

de Cassini, published in 1793 and comprising 182 sheets at a scale of 1:86,400.

The remarkable accuracy of the Cassini maps, which required astronomical

precision and measurement standardization, were important components in the

campaign to unify France under a strong central government.

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c h a p t e r t h r e e

itineraries, and the like. Now scientific mapping provided a new

means of collective spatial knowing suited to the needs of the state.

Moreover, the local maps that did exist needed to be standardized and

reassembled at the Royal Observatory in order to construct the coun-

try cartographically (fig. 28). By imposing national standards of mea-

surement, scientific survey consolidated disordered space under the

dominion of the monarch. In a sense, the map brought France into

cultural circulation both on parchment and in perception. Not only

did this achievement stimulate comparable efforts elsewhere, it also

demonstrated the utility of the sciences of geography and cartogra-

phy as handmaidens to state power. Survey lines on paper enabled the

“rational” management of the nation’s agricultural, economic, and

natural resources. In Enlightenment France, then, science, survey,

and a sense of nationhood were intimately interrelated. Concurrently

in Scotland, geographical survey was regarded as so useful to the na-

tion’s sense of its self that in 1682 Robert Sibbald was appointed geog-

rapher royal. Sibbald’s endeavors—the first of a sequence of such

national geographical surveys—played a pivotal role in the making

of Scottish national identity. By recording the established social order,

scientific survey and cartography reinforced it.

Much the same was true of Jeffersonian America. For when Jef-

ferson orchestrated the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri

in the early years of the nineteenth century, it was with the intention

of bringing the American West within the tenure of the new nation’s

science. Like his own Notes on the State of Virginia (1780 – 81), the con-

ception of this regional reconnaissance was patriotic to the core. With

a loathing for Buffon’s irritating allegations about the inferiority of

the New World’s environment and life-forms, Jefferson was deter-

mined to enlist science in the cause of loyal republicanism. Later sur-

veys, like the United States Geological Survey, no less contributed to

the American nation’s sense of its continental identity. Indeed, what

such surveys accomplished was a visualization of the state as a coher-

ent geographical entity, imaginable, mappable, and therefore substan-

tial. Through cartographic performance the very idea of a distinctive

regional identity was rendered increasingly plausible.

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