Recenze: Lorraine DASTON - Elizabeth LUNBECK, E., Histories of Scientific Observation. Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press 2011, 460 pp

Sacco, Francesco G.

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551TEORIE VĚDY / THEORY OF SCIENCE / XXXV / 2013 / 4///// recenze /////////////////OBSERVATION AND ITSHISTORYLorraine DASTON – ElizabethLUNBECK, E. (eds.), Histories of Scientifi c Observation. Chicago – London: University of ChicagoPress 2011, 460 pp.Francesco G. SaccoTh e seventeen essays edited by Lor-raine Daston and Elizabeth Lun-beck are the fi rst attempt to provideobservation, a fundamental practiceof modern science, with its properhistory. Th e book is a  result of theHistory of Scientifi c Observationproject directed by one of the edi-tors, Lorraine Daston, at Max Plank Institute for the History of Sciencein Berlin. As the editors suggest,the essays can be divided into twoparts. Th e fi rst three essays, cover-ing more than a millennium, framean outline of the history of the prac-tice and the concept of scientifi c ob-servation. Th ey set the stage for casestudies that make up the remainderof the texts. In the contributionsof Katharine Park (Observationin the Margins, 500-1500), Gianna Pomata (Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, 1500-1650) andLorraine Daston (Th e Empire ofOb-servation, 1600-1800), the adventand affi  rmation of the epistemic genre of observation in science is reconstructed in three diff erent phases. Gianna Pomata demon-strates that the story of scientifi c ob-servation is a  modern story. Apart from the so-called empiric physi-cians of Hellenistic age, ancient sci-ence did not use the epistemological category of observation. Hellenistic empirically minded physicians refused Aristotelian subordina-tion of experience to memory and reason, and used a  distinct word (tērēsis) to denote a  philosophicalcategory of observation in medical practise.1 As Katharine Park notes, for Pliny, who was one of the main sources of medieval encyclopaedias, observation meant only the in-terpretation of natural signs. Th e empirical activities of ancient philosophers and natural historians were denoted by the Greek empei-ria or the Latin experientia andexperimentum.Th e emphasis on observation of early modern science derives from the work of astronomers like Tycho, and from the recovery of ancient medicine in the Renaissance.2 Th is 1 Gianna POMATA, “A World of Empirics: Th e Ancient Concept of Observation and Its Recovery in Early Modern Medicine.” Annals of Science, vol. 68, 2011, no. 1, pp. 5–7 (1–25).2 Gianna POMATA, “Sharing Cases: Th e Observationes in Early Modern Medicine.” 552miscelanea“new entry” of modern scientifi clexicon from the sixteenth century does not mean any more medicalprescriptions but the fi rst-handcheck of the diligent observatory of Nature (p.  47). In the seventeenthcentury, as Lorraine Daston shows,the emergence of experimentalphilosophy introduced the distinc-tion between observation andexperiment. From Francis Baconto Claude Bernard, the observationof nature in her ordinary course isdistinguished from the artifi cialintervention of experiment. WhatBacon called artifi cial experimentsbecame the model for experimenttout court. Since the seventeenthcentury, observation has been as-sociated with open-minded study of the ordinary course of nature, whileexperiment became a  synonym foractive intervention of researchersby means of artifi cial devices andof the audacious questions they wanted to verify. As a result of thisexperimental innovation, in theeyes of historians of science obser-vation has played a subordinate rolein modern science.Th e case studies of the secondpart of the book off er argumentsto challenge this view. Th ese essayshighlight the main epistemologicalfeatures of scientifi c observation,suggesting a diff erent conception of Early Science and Medicine, vol. 15, 2010,no. 3, pp. 199–201 (193–236).its status in modern science. In the second section, the contributions of Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Th e Color of the Blood: Between Sensory Experience and Epistemic Signifi -cance), Michael D. Gordin (Seeing is Believing: Professor Vagner’s Won-derful World) and Charlotte Bigg(A  Visual History of Jean Perrin’s Brownian Motion Curves) discusshow scientists provided evidence by means of observation. Th e scientifi c community’s acknowledgement of the existence of new phenomena is founded on the availability of fi rst-hand observations and visual representation of them. Bertoloni Meli’s essay highlight the observa-tion of the changing colour of blood in air and its interpretation in the context of mechanical and chemi-cal philosophies of the seventeenth century. In the course of some experiments carried out at Pisa between 1656 and 1659, the Gali-lean natural philosopher Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and the anatomists Marcello Malpighi and Carlo Fra-cassati noticed the changing colour of blood from dark to bright light once in direct contact with air. Even if Malpighi later observed the same phenomenon during a  dissection of the lungs, Italian scientists did not acknowledge the physiological relevance of the fact. Only when the so-called Oxford physiologists learned about the observation, thanks to their chemical approach 553miscellaneato life the physiological role of air inrespiration became apparent.3On the contrary, as MichaelGordin shows in his contribu-tion, the evidence of phenomenaderived by direct observation wassometimes suffi  cient to award a  theoretical meaning to facts, forinstance, as was the case in the 1863observation of sexually immaturelarvae reproduction by the Russianzoologist and writer Nikolai Vagner.However, evidence is not the only eff ect of fi rst-hand observations. Atthe end of the second section, Char-lotte Bigg’s contribution shows thatsometimes evidence can be achievedonly by illustrations. From 1903,seeking to demonstrate the realexistence of atoms and molecules,the French physical chemist JeanPerrin was able to represent whatAlbert Einstein thought was notrepresentable, the Brownian mo-tion of colloid particles. By meansof statistical analysis of numerousmeasurements, Perrin compensatedthe approximation due to the lack of high precision instruments, anddrew a  simplifi ed representation intwo dimensions of the phenomenon.In November 1909, in admirationof Perrin, Einstein wrote: “I  wouldhave thought such a  precise study 3 Robert FRANK Jr, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A  Study of Scientifi c Ideas. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press 1980.of Brownian motion impossible to realize” (p. 156).Patience and skill are prerequi-site for any successful observation. In order to make inaccessible or intractable phenomena observable, ingenious inquirers have to invent or adopt new techniques observa-tion. In the third section of the book, Mary Terrall (Frogs on the Mantel-piece: Th e Practise of Observation in Daily Life), Harro Maas (Sorting Th ings Out: Th e Economist as an Armchair Observer), Jimena Cana-les (A Number of Scenes in a Badly Cut Film: Observation in the Age of Strobe) and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Empathy as a  Psycoanalytic Mode of Observation: Between Sentiment and Science) describe the strategiesused by some natural and social researchers to face observational problems. From the low-tech op-erations of the eighteenth-century French naturalist René-Antoine de Réaumur described by Terral, to the high-tech stroboscopic instruments employed by twentieth-century physicists as described by Canales, researchers have always adopted adequate observational strategies to make visible their inaccessible object.In the fourth section, Th eodore Porter (Reforming Vision: Th e Engi-neer Le Play Learns to Observe So-ciety Sagely), Mary Morgan (Seeking Parts, Looking for Wholes), OtnielDror (Seeing the Blush: Feeling Emo-554miscelaneations), and Kelley Wilder (Visual-izing Radiation: Th e Photographsof Henry Bequerel) show how the strategies undertaken in some casesdefi ne what is observed. Th eodorePorter demonstrates how the Frenchengineer Frédéric Le Play becamea social scientist in the second half of nineteen century. Th e importanceLe Play accorded to social surveysand the criticisms of statistics il-lustrate the role of social analysisin the formation and strengthen-ing of his conservative views onsocial structure. Mary Morgandescribes the strategies employedby European economists to adaptNIA (national income accounting)to non-European economies, whileOtniel Dror reconstructs the shift from psychological to physiologi-cal approach to emotion in the latenineteenth and early twentiethcentury. At the end of the section,Kelley Wilder emphasizes the roleof technical strategies adopted by the French physicist Henry Bequerelto visualize the radiation of matter.Wilder’s essay shows how Bequerelbequeathed materiality upon thenew discovered property of matterwhere it has had none before. Th isalso enabled Bequerel to distinguishit from the X rays illustrated by the German physicists WilhelmRöetgen.Contributions by DanielaBleichmar (Th e Geography of Ob-servation: Distance and Visibility in Eighteenth-Century Botanical Travel), Andrew Mandelsohn (Th e World on a Page: Making a General Observation in the Eighteenth Cen-tury) and Anne Secord (Coming to Attention: A  Commonwealth of Observers during the Napoleonic Wars) make up the last section. Focusing on natural history in the eighteenth-century, the authors highlight the collective nature of scientifi c observation. Even if it is carried out by scientists dispersed in space and time, communal dimension is required to organize and coordinate individual activities on shared topics. Real or virtual communities always coordinate the eff orts of diff erent eyes and hands in observation. Th is is manifest in the case of Spanish botanists in South America as discussed by Bleichman and, similarly, in the descriptions of the French physicians and physicists described by Mendelsohn or the British marine botanists analysed by Secord.One obvious way of reading the essays in this book would be to follow the editors’ classifi cation of them based on diff erent ana-lytical approaches and arguments (evidence, techniques, objects and communities). But this is cer-tainly not the only way. Th e role of theory, technology, illustration and community are only some of the main epistemological questions of observation in science. In fact, 555miscellaneathe sectional boundaries can betransgressed by underlining otherepistemological problems. By fol-lowing such an approach, regardlessof the disciplinary diff erences orrather because of them, each casestudy becomes a  stage illustratingpertinent features of scientifi c ob-servation. Covering a  long periodspanning from the Middle Ages tothe twentieth century and acrossa  wide number of disciplines, His-tories of Scientifi c Observation is aninvaluable read for all historians,philosophers and sociologists of science interested in the nature of a  fundamental practice of modernscience.///// recenze /////////////////KDO JE HANS ALBERT?Robert ZIMMER – MartinMORGENSTERN, Gespräche mit Hans Albert. Münster: LIT Verlag 2011, 168 s.Jitka PaitlováVzhledem k tomu, že německý fi lo-sof, zástupce kritického racionali-smu a Popperův následovník, HansAlbert (dále jen Albert) je v českýchodborných diskusích dosud téměřneznámou osobou, kniha Gesprächemit Hans Albert (Hovory s Hansem Albertem – dále jen Hovory) je nanej-výš vhodná pro seznámení se s jeho myšlenkami. Albertovy názory jsou totiž v Hovorech prezentovány velmi přístupnou formou, zároveň však erudovaně a  v  nezvyklé tematické šíři, což se tato delší recenze pokusí zprostředkovat pro potenciální čtenáře, kteří dosud s  Albertovými pracemi nepřišli do styku.Ač by se na první pohled mohlo zdát, že forma rozhovoru může býti málo fi losofi cká, příliš populari-zační a  sklouzávat k  povrchnosti, v průběhu čtení se naopak ukazuje, že je to forma fi losofi cky zcela plausibilní. Albert není žádný debutant, nýbrž zkušený (v  době vydání Hovorů devadesátiletý) fi lo-sof a  emeritní profesor, jenž má již svoji fi losofi ckou pozici kritického racionalismu vytříbeně promyšlenu a dokáže proto své názory formulo-vat naprosto jasně a zřetelně (větši-nou mu na zodpovězení otázky stačí několik stručných, zároveň však vý-znamem hlubokých vět). Přirozeně, že forma rozhovoru zčásti předsta-vuje popularizační krok, který má Albertovy myšlenky zpřístupnit těm, kteří se s ním setkávají poprvé (jako právě například většina české akademické veřejnosti). To však není nijak fi losofi cky diskreditující, ba naopak, je to fi losofi cká forma par excellence – vždyť dialogickou formu užíval k  výkladu již Platón. V  tomto smyslu se vyjadřuje sám 

Observation and its History

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Observation and its History

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