Thesis ID: CBB001567528

The Practices of Observational Science and the Development of the American Nation in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1763--1814 (2013)

unapi

Kingsland, Sharon E. (Advisor)
Thode, Simon (Author)


Kingsland, Sharon E.
Johns Hopkins University
Fortuondo, Maria
Walters, Ronald
Morgan, Philip
Morgan, Philip
Brush, Grace
Brush, Grace


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Advisor: Fortuondo, Maria, Walters, Ronald; Committee Members: Kingsland, Sharon, Morgan, Philip, Brush, Grace.
Physical Details: 462 pp.
Language: English

The dissertation addresses an historiographical neglect in histories of US science: the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century concerns over humanity's place in nature. It focuses on the role of the observational sciences in the development of the United States, specifically its trans-Appalachian frontier, between 1763 and 1814. It argues that maps and texts produced on expeditions into the west, using practices in astronomy, geography, military reconnaissance, land surveying, and natural history, helped inhabitants of the young nation understand and organize the world in which they lived. Despite a diversity of intentions, those who ventured into the North American interior shared a common set of scientific tools, both physical and intellectual: instruments, cartographic conventions, systems of classification, authoritative literature, and networks of informants. Through a process of observing unfamiliar lands, they created natural knowledge which circulated back to more populated eastern communities. Representations of the landscape found in reconnaissance reports, maps, and topographical descriptions were composed by, and addressed to, members of scientific societies, government functionaries, travelers, and common settlers. Over time, these works came to reproduce a common set of geographical features and natural productions that, through the expectations of readers, became what I have termed the archetype of a region. The archetypical landscape of the trans-Appalachian West allowed US citizens to comprehend the wilderness, in order to use it as an object in commercial, military, legal, and political pursuits. Employing practices from the colonial past, this science made a vast new world understandable by reducing it to a series of regions with shared features and specimens. In the end, this process helped connect the commercial and political ideas of the nation to the geographical and physical descriptions of territory, in essence making the conception of the American nation inseparable from the landscapes described within archetypical and authoritative texts. Chapters cover types of scientific observational practice, uses of military reconnaissance through the period, changes to civilian surveying in the Old Northwest, popular forms of knowledge used by western settlers, and changing representations of the Old Southwest in geographical texts through the first three decades of US settlement.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/02(E), Aug 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1467534612.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567528/

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Authors & Contributors
Halley, Matthew R.
Swain, Margaret Byrne
Witte, Stephen S.
Withers, Charles W. J.
Walker, Brian M.
Steinicke, Wolfgang
Concepts
Travel; exploration
Scientific expeditions
Science and culture
Geography
Cartography
Sea travel
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
United States
France
Great Britain
Arctic regions
Polar regions
North America
Institutions
Stazione Zoologica di Napoli
British Association for the Advancement of Science
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