The Inuit discovery of Europe? The Orkney Finnmen, preternatural objects and the re-enchantment of early-modern science.

The late-seventeenth century saw a peak in accounts of supposed encounters with ‘Finnmen’ in Orkney. These accounts have shaped the folklore of the Northern Isles. Scholars linked to the Royal Society suggested the accounts represented encounters with Inuit. Subsequent explanations included autonomous travel by Inuit groups and abduction and abandonment. These accounts should be understood as part of a European scientific tradition of preternatural philosophy, occupied with the deviations and errors of nature. Far from indicating the presence of Inuit individuals in Orkney waters, they provide evidence of the narrative instability of early-modern science and its habit of ‘thinking with things’. Captivated by Inuit artefacts, the natural philosophers and virtuosi of the Royal Society imagined Orkney as a site of reverse contact with the ‘primitive’. Nineteenth-century antiquarians and folklorists reliant on these texts failed to understand the extent to which objectivity was not an epistemic virtue in early-modern science

‘A casket of savage curiosities‘: Eighteenth-century objects from north-eastern north america in the farquharson collection

This paper describes a private collection of early Woodlands Indian artefacts which was acquired through eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Scottish military connections with north-eastern North America. The unusual association of original documentation with the material enhances the importance of the collection, adding to our knowledge of the age, provenance and range of eighteenth-century Native American object types

George Wilson's Map of Technology: giving shape to the ‘industrial arts’ in mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh

An intriguing symbol adorns the grave, in Edinburgh's Old Calton Burial Ground, of George Wilson (1818–1859), Britain's first Professor of Technology. Wilson himself had devised the symbol as an emblem for the Industrial Museum of Scotland of which he was Director. In his professorial role he defined and delineated the ‘territorial features’ and ‘intellectual architecture’ of the novel academic discipline of technology. As the founding-Director of the Museum he imagined into being collections which materialised and illustrated the new subject. The paper interprets the emblem as a conceptual map of technology and uses it as the starting point from which to explore Wilson's understanding of what constituted his subject. Thus, the paper examines the Museum as itself a technology for presenting and representing technology. Further, it explores the intertwining of people, things and ideas which, for Wilson, constituted and were productive of technology

TOPS: Technology Options for Coupled Underground Coal Gasification and CO2 Capture and Storage

The TOPS project takes a radical and holistic approach to coupled UCG-CCS, and thus the site selection criteria for the coupled processes, considering both geological, reservoir and process engineering aspects and different end-uses of the produced synthetic gas in order to optimise the whole value chain. In particular, the experimental research carried out utilises a newly constructed high pressure gasification reactor investigating several prospective options of UCG technology implementations. Integrated research addresses field based technology knowledge gaps, such as cavity progression and geomechanics, potential groundwater contamination and subsidence impacts, together with research into process engineering solutions in order to assess the role/impact of site specific factors and selected reagents on the operability of given CO2 emission mitigation options. Ultimately, research aims to minimise the need for on-site CO2 storage capacity as well as maximising the economic yield of UCG through value added end products.Geoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience