Article ID: CBB999265001

Making a Stable Sea: The Littorals of Eighteenth-Century Europe and the Origins of a Spatial Concept (2021)

unapi

Sea level has become the almost unavoidable reference point of the impending environmental cataclysm. While inherently variable, sea level has been naturalized, in the form of mean sea level, as the most reliable vertical datum. But for all its allure as a global baseline, mean sea level is the rather recent product of very specific local environmental and cultural conditions. Its exact definition in the early nineteenth century, built on the assumption of the reliability of littorals as reference points for heights, was preceded in the eighteenth century by lengthy and lively debates about perceived long-term variations of sea level, in which those who insisted on its rise or decline used local examples to bolster their generalizations. This essay explores these debates and lays out how they paved the way for the development of the ideas of a stable sea and of a measured mean sea level.

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Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (2021) Knowing the Littoral: Perception and Representation of Terraqueous Spaces in a Global Perspective. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 108-110). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB999265001/

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Authors & Contributors
Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von
Adler, Antony
Fu, Lee-Lueng
Anthony, Patrick
Alaniz, Rodolfo John
Bhattacharyya, Debjani
Concepts
Oceanography
Hydrography
Oceans and seas
Littoral zone, nearshore
Science and society
Coastal zone and estuarine studies
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
18th century
Early modern
20th century, early
Places
Atlantic Ocean
Greenland
United States
Germany
Europe
Denmark
Institutions
United States Navy
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Great Britain. Royal Navy
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