MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History
"Observing Nature at the Edges: British Naturalists on the Shore during the
Napoleonic Wars"
Anne Secord
University of Cambridge
During twenty two years of military action against France the British developed
near-obsessive habits of watchfulness. Fear of infiltration by spies and
invasion by the French combined with worries about deceptions by fellow
citizens to produce regimes of vigilance and surveillance. This watchfulness
extended to the study of nature, especially of organisms such as seaweeds,
which did not form readily perceived natural families. British marine
botanists quelled taxonomic anxiety by adopting a cautious empiricism based on
scrutiny; they ascertained "true appearances" through both self-surveillanceand
the continual appraisal of other observers.
Friday, April 9, 2010
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge
Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology, and
Society. For more information or to be put on the mailing list contact
[email protected].
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