Science in The Periphery, Australia - Todd

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Science at the periphery: An interpretation of Australian scientific and technological dependency and development prior to 1914
Jan Todd a a Department of Economic History, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia
To cite this Article Todd, Jan(1993) 'Science at the periphery: An interpretation of Australian scientific and technological
dependency and development prior to 1914', Annals of Science, 50: 1, 33 58 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00033799300200111 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033799300200111
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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 50 (1993), 33--58
Science at the Periphery: An Interpretation of Austrafian Scientific and Technological Dependency and Development Prior to 1914
JAN TODD D e p a r t m e n t of E c o n o m i c History, University of N e w South Wales, P O Box 1, Kensington, N S W 2033, Australia Received 30 August 1991 Summary Divergent models applied to the chronology of Australian science leave us with two particular problems unresolved: was late-nineteenth-century science in this peripheral setting becoming more or less dependent on its British fountainhead, and what is the meaning of the reportedly narrow, utilitarian focus of 'colonial science'? This paper argues that a complex interplay of imperial and local imperatives makes neat classification and periodization of Australia's scientific development a hazardous venture. Compounding the complexity is the nature of the relationship between science and technology, a factor largely ignored in the historiography of Australian science. Contrary to common assumptions, an empirical focus on science-technology links suggests that scientific and technological dependencies were not running in parallel, but out of phase, with science as the laggard. Indeed, it appears that science in late-nineteenth-century Australia may have developed more from its interaction with technological systems than from its own internal dynamics.
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Contents Science in the Australian context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dependent science at the periphery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aspects of growth of the scientific superstructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dimensions of dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Practical' colonial science and the science-technology link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Technological research programmes and locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Features of the science-technology link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: dependencies out of phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33 34 40 42 48 53 55 56
1. Science in the Austrafian context Before the 1960s the study of Australian science was a neglected field, 1 a fact which seemed to flow naturally from the traditional view o f science as an endeavour whose function was to p r o d u c e knowledge o f the laws of nature, and which progressed by a process of a c c u m u l a t i o n towards an ever-closer a p p r o x i m a t i o n to the ' t r u t h ' ) The resulting focus o n the people and sites associated with m a j o r ' b r e a k t h r o u g h s ' kept attention well a w a y from the Australian scene. 3
1Michael Hoam in particular has chronicled this neglect; see M. E. Hoare, 'Science and Scientific Associations in Eastern Australia, 1820-1890 (PhD dissertation, Australian National University, 1974), Chapter 1; 'Light on Our Past: Australian Science in Retrospect', Search, 6, No. 7 (July, 1975), 285-90. 2In the words of Hilary and Steven Rose, the view is epitomized by Karl Popper who 'sought to explain how better theory drove out worse theory'. Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, 'The Incorporation of Science',in The Political Economy of Science, edited by Hilary and Steven Rose (London, 1976), pp. 14-31 (p. 16). a Rod Home has also made this point. See R. Home, 'History of Science in Australia', Isis, 73 (1982), 337-42 (p. 341). 0003-3790/93 $10-009 1993Taylor& Francis LtcL
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The emergence of the varied 'extemalist' views of science,4 which gave greater authority and interest to the study of the social context of science, provided a more systematic basis for approaching Australian science. Donald Fleming, in particular, in 1962, brought Australian science on to the world stage precisely because of its apparently peripheral nature when he compared the growth of science in Australia, Canada, and the United States in relation to their social and political environment. He argued that the common political and cultural backgrounds of the three British colonies, combined with their geographical destinies of opening up unchartered territories, gave them a science of a particular and limited style, orientation, and scope.5 It was against this backdrop of changing perceptions of science and the way its history should be approached, that a new and more professional interest in the history of Australian science emerged, led by Ann Moyal's pioneering archival and broad analytical work, 6 and then Michael Hoare's detailed research on early scientific societies. ~ With the gradual blossoming of this new field of scholarly historical study, one theme has stood out as pervading much of the resulting literature. It is a concern to place the development of Australian science in the context of its relationship with the European centre where modem science grew to strength. It is based on the recognition that for at least a substantial part of its histo/'y Australian white-settlement science has stood in a position of some kind of dependence on that European centre.
2. Dependent science at the periphery Though much of the research charting the little-known history of science in Australia has been of limited scope and without overt theoretical orientation, three perspectives have been more or less explicitly brought to bear on the broad sweep of the history of Australian science. The diffusionist model of George Basalla treats science as a specific culture and the spread of science as the transmission of that culture through a process which moves from cultural dependence to independence, s The imperialist model of Roy MacLeod treats scientific culture as an aspect of political hegemony and regards its transmission as an implementation of imperial policy.9 From this perspective, dependence is subordination to a superior power and intellectual, political, economic, and cultural dependence all coincide. The system perspective of Ian Inkster lies somewhere between these two. 1~ It sees scientific culture as part of an intellectual system located within the socio-economic system as a whole. Cultural dependency has institutional form but also intellectual, psychological, and spatial dimensions.
4 On which see Roy MacLeod's excellent review essay, 'Changing Perspectives in the Social History of Science', in Science, Technology and Society, edited by Ina Spiegel-Rosing and Derek J. de Solla Price (London, 1977), pp. 149-95. 5 Donald Fleming, 'Science in Australia, Canada, and the United States: Some Comparative Remarks', Proceedings of the ! OthInternational Congressof the History of Science, Ithaca, 1962(Paris, 1964), pp. 179-96. 6 See, for instance, Ann Mozley, 'A Check List of Publications on the History of Australian Science', The Australian Journal of Science, 25 (1962), 206-14; 'Supplement to a Check List of Publications on the History of Australian Science', ibid., 27 (1964), 8-15; and A Guide to the Manuscript Records of Australian Science (Canberra, 1966). ? M. E. Hoare, 'Learned Societies in Australia: The Foundation Years in Victoria, 1850-1860', Records of the Australian Academy of Science, l, No. 2, (1967), 7-29; 'Doctor John Henderson and the Van Diemen's Land Scientific Society', ibid., 1, No. 3 (1968), 7-24; 'Some primary sources for the history of scientific societies in Australia in the Nineteenth Century', ibid., 1, No. 4 (1969), 71-6; Hoare, Science and Scientific Associations (footnote 1). s George Basalla, 'The Spread of Western Science', Science, 156 (1967), 611-22. 9 Roy MacLeod, 'On Visiting the Moving Metropolis: Reflections on the Architecture of Imperial Science', Historical Records of Australian Science, 5, No. 3 (1982), 1-16. lo Ian Inkster,'Scientific Enterprise and the Colonial "Model": Observations on Australian Experience in Historical Context', Social Studies of Science, 15 0985), 677-704.
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The three overlapping phases of transmission described by Basalla in 1967 still provide the point of departure for any discussion of dependency in the context of centre-periphery relations. Since Phase 1 is essentially metropolitan science carrying out natural history field-work away from home, it is Phase 2 which sees the framework of a local scientific culture being laid down as a transplant from Europe, and it is here that Basalla's notion of dependence is revealed. Beginning when residents in the nonEuropean country start to carry out scientific activities, this period labelled colonial science is still mainly driven from Europe through a cultural dependence operating at institutional, intellectual, and social levels as European institutions provide the scientific education and legitimation of colonial scientists, the agenda and framework of their scientific interests and perceptions, and the models for emergent local scientific organizations. The passing of the peak of colonial science is signalled by the conscious attempt of local scientists to become more self-reliant, but the high level of scientific activity generated in Phase 2 by nourishment from the cultural centre is no guarantee of a successful transition to a mature and independent science comparable with and capable of equal exchange with that of Europe.11 The obstacles lie at the periphery. In the 'tasks' which Basalla cites as the minimum prerequisite for casting off dependence, we see conditions which, if met, would reflect and ensure the institutional, cultural, material, and ideological support of the broader local society. ~2 Independence is conditional on integration of the scientific culture with that of the society in which it is located and on this as the origin of its resources. Basalla's scheme, as the earliest model providing a focus for science at the periphery, was readily taken as a point of reference by Ann Moyal and Michael Hoare in their quest to put some meaning on the chronology of Australian science. Hoare classified Phase 1 as the 'Banksian era' from Cook's 1770 voyage up to 1820. The beginning of Phase 2 was heralded by three events of 1821: the death of Banks; the residence in Sydney of a scientifically inclined new Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane; and the establishment of the first scientific institution, the Philosophical Society of Australasia. Its end, or, more precisely, the passing of its peak, Hoare took to be 1890,just after the formation of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) signalled the campaign to forge a national federated science out of the isolated colonial scientific societies and hence the beginning of Phase 3. x3 By this time, the control of science had passed from 'governor, colonial officials and powerful British-based
11 It has recently been implied that Basalla's concept of independence infers an isolated national science. See the Home and Kohlstedt introduction to their edited collection, International Science and National Scientific Identity (Dordrecht, 1991), pp.2-4, where they suggest that true scientific independence is 'chimerical' since the scientific communities of even the most advanced nations engage in exchange with the 'common pool' of international science. However, it seems clear that Basalla himself did not intend this isolationist interpretation, and indeed stated explicitly that one of the identifying criteria of an independent national science was the ability of the local scientist 'to communicate easily his ideas to his fellow scientists at home and abroad'. Basalla (footnote 8), p. 617. 1z Basalla lists seven 'tasks': religious or philosophical beliefs resistant to science have to be replaced by an ethos providing positive encouragement; the social role of the scientist needs to be defined and given approval; the government needs to give financial aid to science; science must be taught in all levels of the education system; native scientific associations must be formed; channels for formal national and international scientific communication must be established and gain sufficient prestige to attract the best; finally, the creation of a 'proper technological base' for the growth of science is essential. 3 Hoare, Search (footnote 1). Hoare acknowledged that modern Australia was advanced but nevertheless probably still engaged in the struggle of Phase 3.
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scientific advisers into the hands of colonial legislatures and locally employed, resident scientists whose orientation remained largely European but whose commitment and careers became increasingly Australian'. x't Moyal seemed to agree with the basic framework of Basalla's model and with the kind of conclusions to which Hoare had come. Observing the boost to colonial science from the consequences of the gold rushes, she located the beginning of the struggle towards national consciousness in the 1850s and concluded that by the end of the century the local scientific community had 'come of age', with a level of 'maturity and authority' in society that provided sufficient influence to 'shape the contours of a national science'. 15 In the subsequent literature there is little dispute with the Hoare and Moyal conclusion that the science carried out in Australia until at least the 1820s was metropolitan science conducted in a new and fruitful location, driven by the imperial imperatives of expanding maritime trade backed up by scientific direction from the Royal Society, with Banks as the major orchestrator, x6 More contentious, though, is the interpretation to be placed on the rising level of resident scientific activities. To understand the disparate views, we must look more closely at Basalla's notion of dependence and how it compares with that iacorporated in the other models applied to Australian science. Basalla's concept of dependence is given further clarity by what he rejected in Donald Fleming's characterization of the natural history mode of science at the periphery. In its limited scope Fleming saw not only the imperatives of'reconnaisance of a new continent' but also elements of subservience, exploitation and intellectual inferiority and abdication, all of which bred second-rate science. Both centre and periphery had something to gain from maintaining the relationship of dependence: the 'absentee scientists' in Europe built reputations on the exploited labour of their datacollecting colonial cousins, while the latter gained an intellectually safe, if low status, entree to metropolitan science. To this hierarchical relationship, Fleming added the psychological consequences and contradictions of lingering imperial political relations. Thus Australia's scientific community increasingly affirmed its British links and eroded its legitimating ethos of practicality as Australian society was affirming the ethos of egalitarianism. The result was lack of support for the European model of science and poor funding for research--a scientific enterprise showing little real integration into the local culture and society. While Basalla acknowledged some debt to Fleming, he explicitly rejected the connotations of colonial scientific subservience and inferiority as well as the political overtones of his analysis. 17 His preference was to highlight the gains to colonial science from its access to the cultural resources from which independence could be built.X s In
14Hoare, Science and Scientific Associations (footnote 1), p. 2. 15Ann Morley Moyal, Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia: A Documentary History (Melbourne, 1976), pp. 3-5. x6For more detailson this period,see,for instance,Colin M. Finney, To Sail Beyond the Sunset: Natural History in Australia 1699-1829 (Sydney, 1984), and Ann Moyal, A Bright and Savage Land: Science in Colonial Australia (Sydney, 1986). 1~For Basalla, the term colonial science 'does not imply the existence of some sort of scientific imperialismwherebysciencein the non-Europeannation is suppressedor maintainedin a servilestate by an imperial power'. See BasaUa(footnote8), p. 613. Also, in his endnote 2, Basalla indicated that he disagreed with Flemingon somefundamentalpoints. Whilenot specificon what thesewereit is clearthat the notion of dependencyis involved,as indicated, for instance in his endnote 19. is Ibid., p. 614. As a corollary of this, colonial sciencedoes not imply the inferiorityof science at the periphery, merely the operation under certain handicaps.
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this diffusionist view the dispersion of resources from the centre was assumed to shift over time towards a more balanced exchange. However, this view was soon to be confronted by an opposing model inspired by the political economy of imperialism. In the latter, the idea of concentration of power and resources at the centre replaced the notion of spread, and dependency took on a new meaning as entrenched subordination to a greater power. It was this perspective which informed Roy MacLeod when in the early 1980s he questioned the Basalla model both as a general theoretical framework and in its application to Australian science, and particularly for its assumption of a neutral, linear, and homogeneous path to scientific independence, which ignored the political and ideological dimension. Though Basalla's dismissal of imperialist connotations seems to have been a deliberate trade-off to maintain the generality of his model to embrace nations with no colonial relationship with Europe, 19 the major point is that Basalla did not see the dependency relationship as inherently political in the more subtle way that cultural hegemony would imply. For MacLeod, however, it was this hegemony which was particularly significant, leading him to differentiate the British empire as a political and cultural unit for the dispensing of its own form of scientific ideology. In his taxonomy of the 'moving metropolis', 2~ the needs of empire, expressed through science as an instrument of policy, gave the essential shape to each of five phases in the transmission of science to the periphery, and the political, economic, and cultural layers of imperial dominance all overlapped in the metropolitan periphery relationship. As a result, while Basalla's phases described changes located at the periphery, MacLeod's phases are of the centre, following an imperialist British science able to 'assimilate ideas from the periphery, to stimulate loyalty within the imperial community without sacrificing either its leadership or its following'.21 In this way the debate on the formative influences on Australian science sharpened down in the 1980s to whether the imperatives of the centre or the periphery were predominant in shaping the Australian scientific enterprise. As part of this debate, Ian Inkster criticized the MacLeod approach for its lack of attention to the more underlying factors shaping Australian science, and the Basalla model for its neglect of the tensions and ambivalence observed by Fleming. He also detected a lack of clarity about what the phases were actually measuring, what propelled them and what connection they had to local socio-economic forces. The consequence of the latter was a failure to differentiate between areas of relative economic backwardness, where transferred science clashed with established indigenous culture, and regions of recent settlement, where the spread of science was the inflow of the Western scientific community, accompanied by a transferred socio-economic base. 22 To address these failings Inkster limited the scope of Basalla-like transmission to the regions of recent settlement, thereby acknowledging its relevance to Australia,
19Ibid., p. 613. 20 MacLeod ties in the tradition which sees the metropolis as the dominant shaping force on the experience of the 'new world' as it was colonized by Europe. For a discussion of the frontier debate for America, and the coining of the term 'moving metropolis', see Keith Hancock, 'The Moving Metropolis', in The New World Looks at Its History, edited by A. R. Lewis and T. F. McGann (Austin, 1963), pp. 135-41. In Canada, J, M. Careless developed a similar concept, see his 'Frontierism, Metropolitanism, and Canadian History', Canadian Historical Review, 35 (1954), 1-21. 21 MacLeod (footnote 9), p. 14. 22 Inkster (footnote 10), p. 686.
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but making conceptual distinctions between the institutional support structure for science, the intellectual-psychological orientation of the scientific community, and the public rhetoric of scientists attempting to win public support. In his scheme, dependence comes as much from the need for psychological orientation and identity as from the institutional forms of cultural dependence. Furthermore, while following Basalla's emphasis on local indicators of phase development, he has attempted to introduce some possible mechanisms for change. While the kinds of factors involved in Basalla's 'tasks' are visible in Inkster's notion of the transferred socio-cconomic base, we are offered a conceptual scheme for relating these to changes in science. Invoking two ideas from Edward Shils, 23 namely that: intellectual systems comprise both institutions as well as ideas; and that both the major and the ancillary institutions are vital to the intellectual system as a whole, and will require supplementation from foreign institutions if incomplete, Inkster presents a three-layered structure to the scientific enterprise, consisting of the scientific superstructure (the intellectual research programmes and central individuals and institutions of science), a wider culturalinstitutional infrastructure, and a larger socio-economic base of support. 24 There are then several possible modes of interaction which may initiate change. Forces favourable to the transition to Phase 3 may, for instance, come from movement in the socio-economic system as a whole, or from within the scientific community itself as 'public scientists' attempt to portray science in a light that will win encouragement and finance. The result of the application of these divergent interpretative frameworks to the chronology of Australian science has been to create a vigorous debate about the dependency or otherwise of Australian science, the corollaries and layers of that dependence and the timing in various phases of its growth and/or dissipation. The area of contention begins with the definition of the emergence of Phase 2. Looking to Britain for his criteria, MacLeod seems to see a colonial science period extending from around the 1820s to about 1880, with a 'steady flowering of scientific enterprise', sanctioned within the confines of practicality and deference. 2s Inkster's contrasting picture shows Phase 1 predominant up to 1888, with a fluctuating scientific enterprise still essentially dependent on non-resident 'charismatic savants'. Then, despite the suggestive Phase 3 rhetoric associated with the formation of AAAS, the lack of general social support, the unabashed British model, and the largely natural history agenda of the new national institution are all indicative of Phase 2 just coming to prominence. Even more telling, the mental map of the scientists involved was still very much fixed on the metropolis. That is, the form of Phase 3 activity might have been there, but not the spirit. It was not until after the formation of the Commonwealth Advisory Council of Science and Industry in 1916 that the institutional support structure, the structures of science itself and the scientific ethos coincided in a more wide-ranging and independent orientation.
23 Edward A. Shils, 'Towards a Modern Intellectual Community', in Education and Political Development, edited by James S. Coleman (Princeton, 1965), pp.498-518; The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago, 1971), especially Chapter 17. 24 For a case study of the use of these analytical concepts, see Ian Inkster and Jan Todd, 'Support for the scientific enterprise, 1850-1900', in Australian Science in the Making, edited by R. W. Home (Melbourne, 1988), pp. 102-32. For a study of some of the links between the cultural-institutional infrastructure and the other layers of the scientific enterprise, see Jan Todd, 'Colonial Adoption: The Case of the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts', in The Steam Intellect Societies: Essays on Culture, Education and Industry, 1820-1914, edited by Ian Inkster (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 105-130. 25 MacLeod (footnote 9), p. 10. He is not entirely clear on the timing, but he refers to Sir Thomas Brisbane's 1820s astronomic zeal in NSW.
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In the meantime, the promising support, both government and non-official, that had been forthcoming in the boom of the 1880s collapsed in the depressed economic climate of the 1890s. The MacLeod perspective offers yet another version of the period from the 1880s through to the War: with phase changes essentially governed by policy shifts in Britain, they can be quite quick with only a short period of overlap, and two different stages are distinguished. In the first, the formation of AAAS signals neither Phase 2 nor Phase 3 in the Basalla sense. For MacLeod the colonials had merely unwittingly been caught in the web woven at the centre under the banner of imperial federation. Through this institutional move 'England had accommodated, assimilated and kept control'. 26 Then, from 1900, the hand of 'Efficient' Imperial Science was visible in the division of labour which saw the cultivation of mines and forests in Australia and theoretical physics in the metropolis. Though MacLeod's application of his scheme to the empirical detail of AAAS history seemed to acknowledge more local nuances, z7 his interpretation still featured six overlapping phases coinciding with those of British science, and the resulting federal network was seen as linking colonial nationalism to the new social imperialism of the British Association and sustaining dependence upon the metropolis as 'a defining characteristic of Australian science', za Similarly, the formation of the Advisory Council in 1916 was simply a case of following British example and prescription. From the above discussion it may be seen that, despite differing phase classifications and notions of dependence, there is broad agreement that the period to 1880 was characterized by highly dependent science. However, from there the consensus of the three perspectives falls apart as conceptual differences in frameworks exert their effects. The debate thus leaves us with two particular problems unresolved. Most obviously, we are left with the question of whether the following period was one in which Australian science was showing all the signs of maturing to independence, whether it was largely at the mercy of the shifting sands of British policy, or whether it was caught in a complex interaction of imperial and local imperatives and mentalities. What also remains is the question of the meaning of the reportedly narrow scope of colonial/peripheral science. All models are concerned with the fact that science at the periphery seems to have been characterized by a greater bias toward the practical, the empirical, than toward the theoretical speculation which formed an important part of metropolitan science. Basalla attributed it to a need to concentrate on the factors most related to survival in a new and unknown location and took as a criterion of transition toward independence the widening of the intellectual agenda to something comparable with that of European science. Fleming's argument along these lines included the proposition that the intellectually narrow route was also the least taxing for colonial scientists. MacLeod sees it as indicative of the division of intellectual labour most compatible with imperial interests, while Inkster gives more force to the Basalla ideas of the imperatives of survival by suggesting the relevance of local/technological forces.
2eIbid., p. 12. For a similar perspective which looks at Australia within the context of other British colonies,see MichaelWorboys,'The BritishAssociationand Empire:Scienceand SocialImperialism,18801940, in The Parliamentof Science: The British Associationfor the Advancement of Science 1831-1981,edited by Roy McLeod and Peter Collins (London, 1981),pp. 170-87. 2~Roy MacLeod,'Introduction',in The Commonwealthof Science. AN Z AAS and the Scientific Enterprise in Australasia 1888-1988, edited by Roy McLeod(Melbourne,1988).pp. 1-16, especiallypp. 3-4, 7, 14, and note 38. 2aIbid., p. 7. Further elaboration of these points is givenin Chapters 1 and 2.
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Here the three-tiered structure of Inkster's scientific enterprise becomes particularly significant, allowing that different levels of 'science' could be differently driven and oriented. What is generally lacking in all these models, however, is an exploration of the kind of relationship which developed between science at the periphery and the problem-solving activity of an area of recent settlement, whether determined by local or imperial imperatives. In particular, there is little analysis of the link between science and technology and hence the relationship between scientific dependence and technological dependence. The following sections of this essay will examine both the above questions in the light of empirical data gleaned from the literature of Australian science and from new research. Here the Inkster schema for describing the various parts of the scientific enterprise is used and proves a useful conceptual device for extending the analysis of scientific development at the periphery.
3. Aspects of growth of the scientific superstructure z9 The second half of the nineteenth century undoubtedly saw the Australian scientific enterprise grow remarkably in size and complexity under the impetus of fundamental shifts in the local economic, political, and social structure. From mid-century the dramatic changes wrought by gold and self-government helped bring the numbers and also the demand for some science in Australian society. 3~ As the population swelled, British institutions were created anew, among them two universities, each with two science chairs, and scientific services such as geological surveys, botanical gardens, museums and observatories, all established to reconnoitre the natural life, resources, and phenomena that could be harnessed to colonial development. 3~ Many of the required scientific personnel were specially recruited from British institutions. 3z Others had been attracted to the colonies by gold. Either way, remuneration for scientific work, of a kind, now created a small haven for a resident 'colonial science', which found expression in new voluntary scientific associations--the 'philosophical" societies, which laid the groundwork for the subsequent 'royal societies'. These provided a forum for scientific communication between amateur and professional alike, as well as an interested audience. As such, they constituted the nucleus and symbol of the emerging local scientific communities, and their publications the major local expression of scientific work until late in the nineteenth century. These societies represent one dimension of the growth of the scientific enterprise, and their membership levels33 tell us that the upward trend was by no means linear.
29 For a fuller discussion of the growth of the Australian scientific enterprise, see J. H. Todd, 'Transfer and Dependence: Aspects of Change in Australian Science and Technology 1880-1916' (PhD dissertation, University of NSW, 1991), pp. 75-101. 3~ the 1850s the population of Australia almost trebled, to over 1 milfion in 1861. Victoria experienced the major impact with an increase from 77,000 to 540,000 in the same decade. sa See, for instance, J. M. Powell, 'Conservation and resource management in Austrafia 1788-1860', in Australian Space, Australian Time, edited by J. M. Powell and M. Williams, (Melbourne, 1975) pp. 18-60; Ann Morley, 'The Foundations of the Geological Survey of New South Wales', Journal and Proceedings, Royal Society of NSW, 98 (1965), 91-100. ~2 A. R. C. Selwyn, for instance, came from the Geological Survey of Britain to head the Geological Survey of Victoria in 1852. The Reverend William Scott was chosen by the Astronomer Royal to fill the post of Astronomer at the new Sydney Observatory in 1856. ss For a table giving the precise membership figures for the various colonial 'royal' and 'philosophical' societies, see Inkster and Todd (footnote 24), p. 114.
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The burst of growth of the 1850s waned in the 1860s, then rose again in the latter part of the 1870s as most of the societies underwent some kind of self-assessment, reevaluation, and rejuvenation, helped by the injection of energy from fresh recruits to new or expanding institutions.34 The 1880s saw business booming in the colonial royal societies, as almost everywhere else in Australian society. Memberships reached new heights, before succumbing to the effects of the 1890s depression and the trend towards specialization, observable in the proliferation of specialist societies from the 1880S. 35 The affluence and optimism of the 1880s certainly ushered in quite visible advances in the institutional development of science in Australia. The formation of the national science association, the AAAs, served to federate the existing societies and give some unified direction. At its first Congress in Sydney in 1888, 857 participants gathered from Australasian colonies. 36 At the same time the universities were increasing their commitment to science. Though the 'indolence and laissez-faire" at Sydney University had been n o t e d , 37 in 1882 a Faculty of Science was established, followed by a Faculty of Medicine in 1883, and supported by an increase in government funding from s to s in 1882 and to s in 1883. Enrolments also rose from 76 in 1880 to 203 in 1884. 3s Furthermore, the separation of teaching duties in chemistry and physics permitted the appointment of a physics professor, Richard Threlfall, who was even given an assistant lecturer. At Melbourne a new physics chair was created in 1881 and degrees in science and engineering instituted in 1883, the latter being credited with a higher standard than that of Oxford and C a m b r i d g e . 39 From a slow start in the accumulation of science graduates, 4~ according to Inkster, of the 4,760 degrees awarded by Sydney by the end of 1915, 44 per cent were specifically scientific (including medical), while the ratio of science to non-science degrees was 73 per cent. 41 Further diversity in the scientific community was evident as more government departments felt the need for some kind of scientific input and effort, especially from the 1880s. Government scientific services expanded in size and scope. The geological surveys, after uncertain beginnings, had secure roots by the end of the century, and regular publications. 42 Observatories were able to extend their meteorological work with the advent and linking of the telegraph services. Behind the public role of displaying collections, museums expanded their scientific functions and published their
34 Such as Ralph Tate, professor in natural science at the new university in Adelaide from 1876, who gave impetus to rule changes, publication of a regular journal and an elevation of status for the South Australian society. 35 Charted in D. F. Branagan, 'Words, Actions, People: 150 Years of the Scientific Societies in Australia', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW, 104 (1972), I23-41. 36 560 from NSW, 130 from Victoria, 59 from South Australia, Queensland 46, and Tasmania 18, with over 40 from New Zealand. Roy MacLeod, 'From Imperial to National Science', in Commonwealth of Science (footnote 27), pp.40-72 (p.41). 37 Richard Twopeny, Town Life in Australia (1883), Penguin reprint (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 145. 3s Alan Barcan, A History of Australian Education (Melbourne, 1980), pp. 189-190. 39 Ibid., p. 180. 4o By 1889, Melbourne University had three graduates with a BSc, two with a DSc, nine with a BCE, 24 with an M C ~ out of a total number of graduates of 977. Statistical Register of Victoria,(Melbourne, 1889), p. 7. At Sydney University, by 1880, there were nine graduates with a BSc, 11 with BE, out of a total of 859 graduates. Statistical Register of NSW, (Sydney, 1890), p. 375. It should be noted that these figures do not indicate the total numbers of graduates with training in science since, until at least 1900, many students undertaking major sequences of scientific subjects took out the better known BA rather than a BSc. 41 Inkster (footnote 10), p. 697. 42 For an account of the history of the various colonial geological surveys, see History and Role of Government Geolooical Surveys in Australia, edited by R. K. Johns (Adelaide, 1976).
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o w n j o u r n a l s . 't3 Then, as government moved beyond the location of resources to their
regulation, conservation, and more efficient use, concern with fisheries, forests, and water all opened new questions for which science was increasingly asked to provide some answers. 44 At the same time most colonies were establishing departments of agriculture where professional staff included chemists, plant pathologists, entomologists, bacteriologists, biologists, dairy, and other experts. 45 Increasing numbers of engineers found their way into the expanding departments of public works, railways, and posts and telegraphs. 46 Reflecting this diversity, from the 1880s the scientific community could not simply be located within the royal societies. Yet, it seems that most people engaged in some kind of scientific activity belonged to a relevant society. An estimate of the size of the community of science in NSW around 1880, gained from society memberships, comes up with a total of 783 individuals. 47 A similar estimate for a decade later finds a total of 995. 4s At around 1,000 individuals, the community of people sufficiently interested in science to join a society had grown over the three decades from 1860 at a rate which was double that of the whole population. 49 It is notable that of the total 'scientific' community, at least 20 per cent (205), probably considerably more, were employed by government departments carrying out services requiring some technical input (e.g. telegraphs, railways, mines, surveying). 5~
4. Dimensions of dependence Despite this very observable growth in late nineteenth-century local science, just as observable were many aspects of dependence on Britain. As scientific services and institutions were built, the model was almost invariably borrowed from Britain. When people with scientific qualifications and expertise were needed to establish and operate the institutions, they continued to be largely recruited from and trained in Britain. On the other hand, the local system was building the capacity to generate and employ its own scientific personnel--surely a sign of some growing independence. H. C. Russell, NSW Government Astronomer from 1870, was a Sydney University graduate. Edward Pierson Ramsay, appointed a Curator of the Australian Museum in 1874, was
43 For a history of the Australian Museum in Sydney, see Ronald Strahan, Rare and Curious Specimens (Sydney, 1979). For a more analytical account, see S. G. Kohlstedt, 'Australian Museums of Natural History: Public Priorities and Scientific Initiatives in the 19th Century', Historical Records of Australian Science, 5, No.4 (1983), 1-29. 44 For instance, royal commissions established in Victoria and NSW in 1884 in response to widespread concern about water conservation led to the setting up of water conservation agencies soon after. 4s For NSW, see P. J. Mylrea, In the Service of Agriculture: A centennial history of the New South Wales Department of Agriculture 1890-1990 (Sydney, 1990). 46 For a history of the Australian telecommunications system, see Ann Moyal, Clear Across Australia. A history of telecommunications (Melbourne, 1984). 47 This estimate was made from the membership lists of the four main societies for which figures are available--the Royal Society of NSW (figures for 1880), the Linnean Society of NSW (figures for 1882), the Zoological Society of NSW (1879) and the Geographical Society of NSW (figures for 1883). 4a This estimate was calculated from the membership lists of the four societies named above, plus those of AAAS (figures for 1889, NSW members) and the Engineering Association of NSW (figures for 1891). Estimates beyond this time are made extremely difficult by the proliferation of societies and the increasing institutional diversity of the scientific enterprise. 49The total population of NSW had grown from 350,900 in 1861 to 1,132,200 in 1891. The 'scientific community' had grown from 154 (1861 membership of the forerunner of the Royal Society of NSW) to around 1,000. so Occupational information was obtained from a variety of sources, including the actual membership lists of the societies, government lists of civil servants, and the Australian Dictionary of Bibliography.
43
the first Australian-born to fill the post. Although, as Barcan has observed, sl funding for universities would always be hard to justify to a society whose needs for expertise could be so readily satisfied by British immigrants, the 1880s saw some significant steps forward. Melbourne University appointed local candidates to the new chairs of chemistry, natural philosophy, and engineering. In Adelaide, the third Australian chair of chemistry 0885) went to E. H. Rennie, a graduate of Sydney University (BA 1870, MA 1876), and the first Australian to complete a DSc (London 1882). When T. W. Edgeworth David's appointment to the chair of geology at Sydney was confirmed in 1891, the recommendations of British geologists on the University's Selection Committee in Britain were rejected) 2 Publication patterns also showed signs of greater local confidence and prestige. Indicating this trend, the 20 major contributors to the Royal Society of NSW, while still looking to overseas journals to publish their work, increasingly were prepared to publish a greater proportion in the local journal. Australian journals received 73 per cent of their papers in the period 1901-1914, compared with only 44 per cent in the period 1866-1883. 53 Similarly, though Australian scientists still looked to European honours, particularly the Fellowship of the Royal Society, 54 in 1878 the first Australian award was instituted in the form of the Clarke medal struck by the Royal Society of NSW in honour of their own Reverend W. B. Clarke. There is also evidence that, though still focused on the centres of science, Australian scientists were increasingly extending their horizons beyond Britain. As a result of the arrangement of world-wide exchanges of publications, by 1890 institutions in 31 countries were receiving the journal of the Royal Society of NSW and 29 of those countries were sending back publications of their own. Though the number of receiving institutions was greatest for Britain, by 1895 the USA had taken the lead--71 compared with 68 in Britain. Germany, France, and Italy also figured strongly. Moreover, the journal was clearly judged a worthy exchange. Germany headed the list with a 93 per cent rate of reciprocation, ss A few Australian scientists were also having their work published in overseas journals outside Britain. This varied with the subject, but in astronomy, for instance, by the end of the century the prolific John Tebbutt was just as likely to have his work published in a German journal as a British one, and in anthropology, Robert Mathews was published in journals in Germany, America, and France as well as in Britain. There are also signs of increasing independence in particular fields of science, especially those where contact with the raw data of the Australian location gave advantages of insight. In biological sciences, Linden Gillbank has argued that: 'the 1880s provided Australasia with the essential ingredients--the individuals and
51 Barcan (footnote 38), p. 189. s2 Ever Reaping Something New. A Science Centenary, edited by David Branagan and Graham Holland (Sydney, 1985), p. 125. 5a Figures compiled from the journal of the Royal Society of NSW, the Royal Society of London's Catalogue of Scientific Papers for 1864-1873, 1800-1883, 1884-1900, and its International Catalogue of Scientific Publications for 1901-1914. 54 Home's detailed analysis of nominations and elections to the Royal Society of London indicates the disadvantages suffered by aspiring Australian candidates, but a significant improvement in their success rate from the 1880s, reflecting the growing strength of university science. R. W. Home, 'A World-wide Scientific Network and Patronage System: Australian and Other "Colonial" Fellows of the Royal Society of London', in Home and Kohlstedt (footnote 11), pp. 151-80. 55 Lists of publications exchanged with other institutions were published in the journal, in various forms, from 1876 until just after 1900.
44
J. T o d d
institutions, the ideas and techniques--for a renewed exploration from within Australasia of its own flora and fauna, an exploration spurred on by evolutionary and economic incentives'.56 In mind she has the likes of James Wilson's team at Sydney University, whose research on Australian marsupials and monotremes went beyond 'elaboration of novelty', to seek an explanation of the place of these peculiar mammals in the evolutionary scheme. While acknowledging that Australasia was still dependent on Europe for its biological ideas and manpower, Gillbank believes it was nevertheless developing the structures for its eventual biological independence, 'structures that would grow and proliferate to nurture Australasian biological research through the twentieth century',s7 In geology, while Vallance demonstrated the dominance of Australian geology by European experience and concepts until the mid-1870s, 5s he and Branagan would point to the growing competence and value of geological maps produced in Australia, to vital areas of investigation such as the relation of glacial conditions to geological time, the development of microscopical petrography and the elucidation of the evolution of Australasian land surfaces. Furthermore, though the age of Australian coal had been the subject of protracted intercolonial dispute among geologists appealing to different sorts of European authority, by 1888 the problem had been resolved to the satisfaction of most colonial geologists, the key to the puzzle coming not from Europe but from India. 59 The surge of vitality in the universities in the 1880s also brought with it a concerted effort to link teaching with research. Orme Masson, who took up Melbourne's chemistry chair in 1886, argued that no university should be merely 'a second-hand Science Shop', 6~ and proceeded to dispense research topics derived from his own previous work in Bristol and Edinburgh, while himself taking up the theories of solution published by Ostwald, Arrhenius and Van't Hoff, and working toward the presentation of his own gaseous theory of solution in 1891.61 The arrival of W. Baldwin Spencer as biology professor and Thomas Lyle as natural philosophy professor, completed a trio of scientific teachers dedicated to drawing new graduates into their research programmes. In this they were aided by the introduction of research degrees and the 1851 Exhibition Scholarships, established in 1891 to allow proven colonial researchers to refine their skills in Britain. 62 Masson, Spencer, and Lyle would each be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society and honoured by knighthoods, giving ironically 'the scientific teaching of the university a renown which justified those who believed that the university should select its professors in the United Kingdom'. 63
s6 Linden Gillbank, 'The Life Sciences: Collections to Conservation', in Commonwealth of Science (footnote 27), pp. 99-129 (p. 103). 57 Ibid., p. 103. ss Thomas Vailance, 'Presidential Address: Origins of Australian Geology', Proceedingsof the Linnean Society of NSW, 100 (1975), 13-43. Stafford suggests that this dominance extended until well past the turn of the century. Robert A. Stafford, 'A Far Frontier:. British Geological Research in Australia during the Nineteenth Century', in Home and Kohlstedt (footnote 11), pp. 75-96 (p. 89). 59Thomas Vallance and David Branagan, 'The Earth Sciences: Searching for Geological Order', in Commonwealthof Science(footnote 27), pp. 130-43. More detailed discussion of the coal dispute is given in T. G. Vallance, 'The Fuss About Coal', in Plants and Man in Australia, edited by D. J. and S. G. M. Cart (Sydney, 1981), pp. 136-76. 6~ Blainey, A Centenary History of the University of Melbourne (Melbourne, 1971), p. 105. el Joan Radford, The ChemistryDepartmentof the Universityof Melbourne (Melbourne, 1978), pp. 54-60. 62 For details on careers of 1851 Exhibitioners, see I. W. Wark, '1851 Science Research Scholarship Awards to Australians', Records of Australian Academy of Science, 3 (1977), 47-52. 63 Blainey (footnote 60), p. 106.
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Compounding such paradoxes, the trend in scientific production was not necessarily ever upward. Schedvin has observed that the history of Australian science 'is littered with examples of frantic endeavour followed by collapse, unbounded optimism followed by pessimistic indifference, and lack of public trust in long-term intellectual endeavour'. 64 He cites the depressed 1890s as a period in which the optimistic and energetic university research of the 1880s gave way to pessimism and some stagnation. Home has also described the combination of factors which brought 'sudden deep decline' to astronomy at the beginning of the twentieth century, after such promising growth in the late nineteenth century. 6s Seddon has documented the persistence of Eurocentric models of thought in the earth and life sciences, e6 Assertions of independence could also be clouded by issues of theory versus practice. A 1908 Royal Commission enquiring into forestry and its administration, noted the divergence of opinion among educational experts and others on the qualities required in the Chief Executive. The issue was between 'a highly trained man from abroad.., possessing the knowledge of principles of modern forestry under European or perhaps Indian conditions', and 'a man having Australian forestry experience and proved organising and administrative ability'. 6: Despite advice that a salary should be offered to draw the very best in America, Great Britain, or India, the commission opted for the local practical expert against the theoretical expert from abroad. In addition, it seemed that there were at least two trends which acted consistently against the apparently increasing signs of independence. As Chambers has argued in his critical assessment of the significance of the 'tyranny of distance', 6s it is access to authority, power, and intellectual and material resources which creates centre and periphery and the fact was that the metropolis still held all the attractions, even for locally produced scientists, and their natural inclination seemed to be to move on to Britain for further scientific training, or professional betterment. The 1851 Exhibition scholarships and the instigation at Cambridge in 1895 of a new research degree, gave greater force to the trend, making British research training more accessible to colonial scientists. Only a few years later came the Rhodes Scholarship scheme. Home has argued that for physics, the bubble burst as such institutional changes in Britain served to strengthen imperial scientific links and to reinforce an increasingly metropolitan orientation in local physics research. 69 The war added another force in this direction, through the recruitment of Australian scientists to aid the British scientific war effort. 70
~4C. B. Schedvin, 'Environment, Economy and Australian Biology, 1890-1930', Historical Studies, 21 (1984), 17-26, (p. 19). 65 R. W. Home, 'The Physical Sciences: String, Sealing Wax and Self-Sufficiency', in Commonwealth of Science (footnote 27), pp. 147-65, (p. 153). 66 G. Seddon,'Eurocentrism and Australian science: Some examples', Search, 12 (1981-82), pp. 446-50. e7 Royal Commi~ion of Inquiry on Forestry, Final Report (Sydney, 1909), p. xi; also, p. xiii. It was acknowledged that an overseas expert 'would be ignorant of the peculiarities of Australian flora, characteristics of our indigenous trees, the opposite conditions of soils and climate and the liberal laws under which our rural populations are controlled'. as David Wade Chambers, 'Does Distance Tyrannize SeienceT, in Home and Kohlstedt (footnote 11), pp. 19-38. 69 For the effects of physics, see R. W. Home and Masao Watanabe, 'Physics in Australia and Japan to 1914: A Comparison', Annals of Science, 44 (1987) 215-35, (p. 223), and R. W. Home, 'The Be~nningsof an Australian Physics Community', in Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, edited by Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (Washington DC, 1987), pp. 323-50. ToIan Rae, 'Chemists at ANZAAS: Cabbages or Kings.% in Commonwealth of Science (footnote 27), pp. 166-95, (p. 175).
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Though some returned to apply their enhanced expertise in Australia, m a n y did not. 71 Likewise, m a n y of those British scientists sought for the building of scientific institutions in Australia themselves eventually returned to the metropolis. Liversidge, Bragg, and Threlfall are a m o n g the most eminent, while all of the Wilson circle, who had done so much for biological research at Sydney, would find their way back to the metropolis, including the one Australian graduate, Elliott Smith. 72 The end result of these two outflows was therefore the constant need for replenishment of scientific personnel from outside. Also running counter to trends of greater independence, was the fact that although the scientific societies around which the scientific community formed were not socially marginal--indeed they could attract an impressive roll-call of membership from the educated and cultural elite of society--the downside was the small number of people actively making contributions to their local scientific society. Even AAAS suffered, sixty-seven people delivering five or more papers, totalling 604, between 1888 and 1923. About half of those speaking in 1923 had been members in 1888. 73 Committees of investigation were similarly dominated by a few. The fact was that the membership of the societies was largely an interested audience. While the proportion of the Royal Society of N S W membership having an identifiable scientific background, training, experience or overt intellectual activity in science rose from only 40 per cent in 1870 to 65 per cent by 1900 and 80 per cent by 1920, TM a continuing concentration of effort remained, with the intellectual load being carried by a few. Furthermore, the active scientists clearly felt themselves intellectually marginal to the culture of their society. Powell has argued that even such an elevated and prominent scientist as Ferdinand Von Mueller felt insecure during most of his career despite his prolific international publications, his role in advising various colonial authorities on economic botany, his network of patronage within Australian science and the scope for research as Director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. Indeed, 'his treasured correspondence with Bentham and the Hookers showed an acute anxiety a b o u t the need to justify a plum position to supposedly philistine paymasters', and anguish over the loss of the Botanic Gardens to a landscaper. 75 The other influence on the ethos of colonial science was the feeling of intellectual marginality to the metropolitan centre of science. The Reverend William Branwhite Clarke, for instance, accepted the humble limits of peripheral science when he cheered his colleagues with the thought that 'we have done well to reflect a borrowed light rather than aim at shining with an effulgence of our own'. 76 Moreover, in Clarke's
71For instance, W. L. Waterhouse, a Sydneygraduate in agriculture and subsequentlya pioneer in plant breeding, receivedpost-graduate training at Imperial College, London, but becameone of the first to hold a research chair, at Sydney, in an Australian university. David Rivett, a Melbourne graduate in chemistry, undertook graduate work at Oxford and at the Nobel Institute, Stockholm,beforesucceedingMasson in the Melbourne chair in chemistry in 1924. 72On the 'braindrain' in medicalresearch, see F. C. Coutrice, 'Researchin the medical sciences:The road to national independence', in Australian Science in the Making (footnote 24), pp. 277-307. 73MacLeod (footnote 27), p. 50;, Inkster (footnote 10), p.694. 74These figureswerecompiledfrom occupational and biographical data from various sources,including several issues of the Sands Directory of Sydney, Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Civil Service Blue Books, and details of membershipand activityprovided in the Society'sjournaL For a more detailed table see Inkster and Todd (footnote 24), p. 114. 75j. W. Powell, 'Protracted Reconciliation: Society and the Environment', in Commonwealthof Science (footnote 27), pp. 249-71, (p. 251). 76W. B. Clarke, Transactions of the Royal Society of NSW, 9 (1875), 4.
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experiences we have vivid expression of both the cultural hegemony exerted by the superior authority of metropolitan science and its deliberate manipulation by metropolitan scientists. There were few to match Sir Roderick Impey Murchison in the trading of metropolitan recognition for peripheral proselytizing of his geological views and maintenance of the metropolitan/peripheral division of scientific labour. 77 Though Clarke won some patronage from Murchison, he also suffered the latter's most blatant attempt to eliminate dissent. Elizabeth Newland has depicted the ClarkeMurchison clash over priority in the discovery o f gold in Australia, as 'a case study in British scientific hegemony', which showed 'the lengths to which the "King of Siluria" was prepared to go in order to maintain his authority in all matters relating to gold'. 7s The 'King' went to similar lengths in his dispute with another local geologist, C. A. Zachariae, over the geological age of Victorian goldfields. In both cases the conflict was 'resolved' by compromise, bringing in Newland's assessment no immediate alteration to the British domination of Australian colonial science. The nature of this domination in zoological science has been examined by Kathleen Dugan, who argues that empirical data collected in Australia to support antiDarwinian views were recast in Europe as evidence of Darwinian evolution. Here the interpretation of Australian scientists was ignored, excluding them from the theoretical debate in Europe. Only their raw data were considered relevant. 79 The consequences, at both centre and periphery, are revealed most poignantly in the half-century delay in recognition of the platypus as an egg-laying mammal. When finally confirmed independently and simultaneously in 1884 by a resident scientist and a visiting British scientist, the latter received resounding acclamations, while the former was ignored, s~ There are of course two sides to such episodes, reflecting not only the ability of British scientists to call the shots in any disputes, but, conversely, a new confidence and willingness on the part of local scientists to engage in dispute with metropohtan authorities. Though the superior power of British scientists is clearly visible in the delivery of authorship of the Flora Australiensis to a British botanist, despite Mueller's knowledge and familiarity with the living species and his efforts in their collection, Ann Moyal believes that Mueller's challenge of the decision 'marks a turning point in colonial science', sl Likewise, Newland argues that the Murchison episodes were the working-out of an anachronism in Australian science, as Murchison came face to face with new 'stirrings of nationalism and a desire for independence' in which for the first time local scientists were prepared to challenge the British-based 'expert'. s2 It is notable that it was the non-British immigrant Zachariae who was least inclined to compromise with Murchison. Thus there is a complex interplay here and interpretation cannot be regarded as straightforward. It is for this reason that Stafford concludes that Murchison's activities 'defy neat classification according to the various models that have been proposed to
77 See Robert Stafford, 'The Long Arm of London: Sir Roderick Murchison and Imperial Science in Australia', in Australian Science in the Making (footnote 24), pp. 69-101. Ts Elizabeth Newland, 'Sir Roderick Murchison and Australia: A Case Study of British Influence on Australian Geological Science' (MA dissertation, University of NSW, 1983), p. 90. 79 Kathleen G. Dugan, 'The Zoological Exploration of the Australian Region and its Impact on Biological Theory', in Reingold and Rothenberg (footnote 69), pp. 79-100. s o The local scientist was Wilhelm Haacke, Director of the South Australian Museum. sl Moyal (footnote 15), pp. 172-5. s2 Newland (footnote 78), pp. 180.
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periodize the development of colonial science', s3 Similarly, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt has argued that the 'colonial museums defy the categories which might be seen as steps toward independence'. Remaining linked to their larger, richer, and better-staffed counterparts in Europe, and maintaining a reciprocity that went back almost to their origins, they nevertheless increasingly exhibited an expectation of 'returns' for Australian specimens sent overseas, an ability to generate public, government, and scientific support, and a pride and expertise in Australian materials. She concludes that 'fundamentally, Australian museums were well-integrated into the international movement of museum building and adept at gaining local support'. 84 This finds some affinity with Inkster's insight that the localized emphasis of the colonial science agenda and rhetoric 'may well have served to mitigate (or... mediate) intellectual dependence on the imperial metropolis'. 85 The complexity of the issue of dependence is further revealed by the fact that success in metropolitan terms could bring tensions of a new kind to a peripheral location, as Rod Home has shown for the case of William Bragg. 86 Though Bragg's Australian research had taken him to the forefront of his science, his new-found theoretical sophistication and self-esteem also brought a new kind of isolation. One of an elite at the frontier, but cut off from the informal networks of his field, Bragg now felt the intensity of his disadvantaged location. In Shils/Inkster terms, Bragg had moved even more closely to a situation where his mental map was drawn around the metropolis, even as his work exhibited the strength of local science. Clearly then there were competing and antagonistic forces at work on nineteenthcentury science in Australia. Although it was undoubtedly growing in size and broadening its horizons, it is certainly not clear that the scientific enterprise was becoming self-sustaining. Indeed there is a very strong impression that if one key person departed a whole field of science could collapse, or at least go into decline, as happened in astronomy.
5. 'Practical' colonial science and the science-technology link That dependence/independence is more complex than movement along a linear path in either direction becomes even more obvious when the nature of the sciencetechnology hnk is explored. The models of peripheral science already discussed in the second section of this essay all make note of the allegedly narrow focus of colonial science and its practical and utilitarian bias, which contrasted with the much more theoretical style of European scientific scholarship. A perusal of the scientific contributions to local societies bears out this view. s7 These three perspectives, however, give little analytical attention to the link between science and technology in a peripheral location, and the import of this for scientific or technological dependence.
s3 Stafford(footnote 77), p. 93. s4 Kohlstedt (footnote43), quotes p. 1%18. SSIan Inkster, 'Science, Public Science and Science Policy in Australia circa 1880s-1916--Some Beginnings',Workshopon the History of Sciencein Australia,Australian Academyof Science,August, 1982, p. 5. se R. W. Home,'The Problemsof IntellectualIsolation in ScientificLife:W. H. Braggand the Australian ScientificCommunity, 1886-1909',Historical Records of Australian Science, 6, No. 1 (1984), 19-30. sTInkster has in fact attemptedan indicativeclassificationofpapers presentedto AAASfrom 1888-1923. He found that natural history remained dominant at 54-6percent, that 'localized" enquiry stood at 67 per cent, and that the non-localized'open' subjects of the natural sciencesreachedonly 16"7per cent. For details, see Inkster (footnote10),pp. 694-7. Homehas also found that 'location-specificobservationalwork' dominated Australian physicsover the same period. See Home and Watanabe (footnote69), p. 233.
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Basaila suggested that a technological base was one of the necessary conditions for science to make the transition to maturity, but, apart from projecting the future value of perceiving technology in cultural terms, offered little explanation of why this should be so. MacLeod's taxonomy of the phases of British imperial science embraces economic/ technological 'function' as a parameter of scientific practice, suggesting a 'connection' between apparently parallel political, economic, and technical developments, but giving little indication of the fabric of such connections. Inkster suggests the relevance of local technological imperatives as a force for change, acting through the socioeconomic base of the scientific enterprise, but is limited by lack of empirical detail. His later, empirical paper on the issue of technological dependence, as manifested in Australian patents, provides rich evidence of a robust Australian technological system, hinting that this was despite an apparently dependent scientific enterprise, but the links between science and technology are not explored, ss Overall, the literature on Australian science leaves us with the impression that science was a quite separate activity from that of technology, and yet paradoxically, also the impression that scientific dependence/independence would run in parallel, almost as reverse sides of the same coin. The reality, however, may have been quite different from the images conveyed. The following glimpse into an empirical exploration of aspects of technological change in late nineteenth-century Australia reveals instead a level of interaction between the personnel, institutions, and problems of Australian science and technology not previously brought to light. To take two specific examples of technology transferred from Europe at the end of the 1880s--anthrax vaccination in the pastoral industry and cyanide gold extraction in the mining industry--we find a myriad of different types of links between science and technology, and with them a complex mixture of dependent and independent relationships. It is clear that the intellectual content, the corpus of knowledge underlying these two technologies, was metropolitan and had to be transferred along with the repertoire of techniques necessary for putting each into operation. While some local scientists would have been familiar with the more established elements of this knowledge and technique, they were not necessarily initially in touch with the newer elements embodied in the new technologies. To this extent intellectual scientific dependence was obvious and went hand in hand with technological dependence. Nevertheless, drawing essentially on the stock of metropolitan knowledge and technique, local agents of science were involved in the following functions, all of which had implications for the level and nature of technological dependence. 1. People with scientific training were involved in the analysis and definition of critical problems in the two relevant production systems. In the case of anthrax, for instance, it was a newly appointed government veterinary surgeon with bacteriological training who was able to redefine the problem manifested in the periodic eruption of the devasting Cumberland disease as one due to anthrax bacilli rather than poisonous weed, and hence entirely reorient the approach to
88 Ian Inkster, 'Intellectual Dependency and the Sources of Invention', History of Technology, 12 (1990), 40-64.
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J. Todd seeking solutions,s9 Similarly, scientists giving evidence to the 1889-1891 Victorian Royal Commission into the decline of gold mining were able to define one dimension of the problem as the need for new extraction methods rather than new ore bodies. 9~ 2. Scientific personnel were also involved in searching out and selecting appropriate technologies for the local context. It was the bacteriological knowledge of NSW Government Veterinarian Edward Stanley which made possible informed overseas enquiries about anthrax and the use of preventive vaccines, and the assessment of the replies. 91 In Victoria, James Cosmo Newbcry, with Harvard scientific training and qualifications in metallurgy and assaying from the Royal School of Mines, combined his duties as Government Analyst with an active search for and scrutiny of technologies to solve Victoria's goldmining problem. 92 3. Scientific personnel were also involved in screening these two imported technologies. In the case of anthrax, the government-appointed NSW Anthrax Board, with scientific representatives Edward Stanley and Government Analyst, William Hamlet, screened pasteur's vaccine for efficacy and safety. 93 At the same time the NSW Rabbit Commission, with several representatives from the scientific community, was conducting a series of experiments to screen Pasteur's other disease-based method f6r rabbit extermination.94 In the case of the cyanide process, Newbcry carried out trials on the process for the Royal Commission in 1891, while at the Ballarat School of Mines, Professor Alfred Mica Smith, graduate of Owen's College, London University and Victoria University, research colleague of Bunsen, Playfair, and his uncle, Dr Angus Smith, screened the process on behalf of the interests of mining education, the industry, and his perception that educational institutions should lead in choosing processes to suit industry problems. 95 In South Australia, Government Analyst G. A. Goyder screened the process for a government seeking to stimulate its mining industry.96
a9 For Stanley's diagnosis, see Edward Stanley, Report to Alexander Bruce, 17 December, 1885, in Appendix G, Annual Report of the Stock and Brands Branch of the N S W Department of Mines for 1885, p. 1516. A retrospective account is given in E. Stanley, 'The Anthrax Disease', in NSW Anthrax Board, Report on Experiments demonstrating the efficacy of Pasteuf s vaccine of Paris as a preventivefor Anthrax (Cumberland Disease) in Sheep and Cattle (Sydney, 1889), pp. 8-20. Details of the events leading up to this analysis, and its significance, may be found in Todd (footnote 29), pp. 112-31. 90 Victorian Royal Commission on the Decline of Goldmining, Third and Final Report and Minutes of Evidence (Melbourne, 1891), in Votes and Proceedings of the Victorian Legislative Assembly (1891), Volume 5. For further details of the way evidence was presented to the Commission, see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 275-7 and pp. 291-4. For details oftbe kind of analysis oftbe problem made by an earlier board of enquiry see ibid., pp. 246-5 I. 91 E. Stanley, 'Splenic Apoplexy in Sheep', included in 'Report of the Australasian Stock Conference' (Sydney, 1886), p. 17, printed in Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW,, 42 (1887, Session 2), part 2, p. 227; Annual Report of the Stock and Brands Branch of the NSW Department of Mines for 1886 (Sydney, 1887), pp. 7-8. 9z Evident in Newbery's reports during the 1880s in the Annual Report of the Victorian Department of Mines. 93 NSW Anthrax Board, Report (footnote 89). 94 When Pasteur proposed, as a candidate for a prize of s 000, that chicken cholera cultures should be distributed across Australian pastures to eliminate the rabbit pest by means of infectious disease, a commission of enquiry, with an experiment committee and bacteriological expert, was set up to assess the feasibility and safety of such measures. The work and findings of the commission may be found in 'Progress Report of the Rabbit Commission' (Sydney, 1889), in Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW, 47 (1890), Part 4. p. 775 If. For a detailed discussion of this rabbit episode, see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 135-49; 156~0. 9s Victorian Royal Commission (footnote 90), Third Report, p. x; Minutes of Evidence, p. 827. 94 G. A. Goyder, 'Report', in South Australian School of Mines, Annual Report for 1893, p. 159.
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4. In introducing these imported science-based technologies, local agents helped smooth the way for diffusion of methods which involved marked discontinuities with the prevailing technologies and their skill bases. They did this by translating recognized economic problems in each industry into the relevant scientific form, providing potential users with a radically different perception of the problem and hence its appropriate solution. 97 Thus, Government Vet Edward Stanley and Government Analyst William Hamlet took prominent roles in persuading stockowners that the decimation of flocks by Cumberland disease was equivalent to the transmission and propagation of the anthrax bacillus. In Ravenswood in Queensland, Joseph Flude from the Ballarat School of Mines, and J. Macdonald Cameron, the M P previously of the Royal School o f Mines, had both prepared the mind of the local mining warden to an acceptance of chemical methods and he in turn influenced local miners to reorient their technological choices from the brute force of mechanical methods. 5. Articles describing the 'science' involved in the technologies were part of the transmission of information which facilitated diffusion, and in both cases appeared in the relevant industry trade journals and departmental publications. 98 6. In both cases scientific method was used, not only in screening, but also overtly in the form of trial demonstrations to market the processes. Carried out by experts of the incoming techologies, in the case of anthrax vaccine the trials were given even greater effect by the presentation, by local agents, of scientific theory and discourse, and the presence of the Anthrax Board as official screening agent of the Government to authenticate the 'scientific proot'. 7. In the cyanide case, scientific personnel were co-opted to provide expert witness in arbitration of the patent disputes which erupted out of the conflict between receiver and patentee of the transferred system. 99 8. Scientific personnel also acted to incorporate the new corpus of knowledge and technique into the local knowledge structure forming the curriculum of training institutions. Edward Rennie in Adelaide, Alfred Mica Smith in Ballarat, O r m e Masson in Melbourne, Archibald Liversidge in Sydney, all ensured early entry of the cyanide process into mining education. 1~176 New Veterinary Science Professor, Australian John Stewart, Silver Medallist in pathology and bacteriology from the Royal (Dick's) Veterinary College in
97For a discussion of the differencesof context, practice,and perception between the prevailingand new technologyfor coping with anthrax, see Todd (footnote 29),pp. 112-31; for an account of the part played by key personnel in persuading stockowners, see ibid., pp. 131-41, 15(L6, 161-70. In the case of the cyanide process, ibid., pp. 244--66, 275-306. 9s For instance, Australasian Pastoralists' Review,Sydney Stock and Station Journal, Agricultural Gazette of NSW, Australian Mining Standard, Annual Reports of the various colonial departments of mines. 99The cyanide process became the subject of major patent litigation, first in Britain, and then in goldmining countries around the world, including Australia. In the latter, cases in each of the goldmining colonies dragged on for years in a determinedcampaign aimed at securing use of the processon local mining industry terms. For a discussion of the way scientistsand scientificdebate wereemployed,see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 387-90, 396-410. The declarations made by scientistsin the NSW case are accessiblein "Amendments to Cyanide Patent No. 453', Attorney General's Special Bundle, (NSW State Archives, 5/4706). agoAs indicated in the examination questions reproduced in the calendarsof the various institutions. For a detailed discussion, see Todd (footnote29), pp. 428-33.
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J. Todd Edinburgh, and previously of the NSW Stock Branch, oversaw the introduction of bacteriology and anthrax vaccine technology into the new Veterinary Science course at Sydney University.T M 9. In the case of cyanide, scientists, both government and private, acted as consultants to users, advising on minor adjustment of manipulations of the process to suit it to their specific ores. 10. It was with strengthening knowledge of bacteriology and anthrax that key figures in the pastoral industry identified a new critical problem in the interaction of the transferred vaccine SYstem with a new environment, l~ Likewise, location-specific problems associated with use of the cyanide process were identified by consulting metallurgists such as Dr John Storer and Dr Charles Mulholland, and South Australian Government Analyst, G. A. Goyder. 11. Local scientists also processed institutional models from overseas into a form more suited to Australian conditions. Thus the model of the Pasteur Institute in Paris became translated into the proposal for an Australasian Stock Institute, ~~ while the models of mining schools in London and Freiburg became translated into the proposal for four-year professional diploma courses in mining education in Victoria. 1~
In none of the instances referred to above was the science-technology link in the form of the conventionally assumed relationship of 'scientific' theory providing 'the' principles for development of 'a' technology, or of the scientific superstructure providing the knowledge base of a technological system. To the extent that such a relationship existed, it was all part of the metropolitan development of these technologies. Yet here at the periphery the local scientific enterprise was acting in several ways as an intellectual resource facilitating the independent local assessment, the entry and the operation of the technology, all without the creation of any 'new' knowledge. Also without the creation of any new knowledge, in these cases the scientific community as such exerted its influence in a number of ways. First, it used its authority to influence governments against Pasteur's use of disease-based technology, and to introduce legislative controls. 1~ Secondly, the networks of the scientific community helped bring local scientist John McGarvie Smith in contact with the Pasteur representatives, and then with his future partner in production of a modified vaccine, John Alexander Gunn. Giving them initial access to the 'uncodified' aspects of the anthrax vaccine technology, this also laid the groundwork for their modification of that technology to suit local conditions. 1~ Thirdly, the standards and norms of the
1ol Personal Papers of John Douglass Stewart, Sydney University Archives, p. 35. 1o2Jan Todd, 'The Pasteur Institute of Australia: success and failure', in Louis Pasteur and the Pasteur Institute in Australia, edited by Jean Chaussivert and Maurice Blackman (Sydney, 1988), pp. 25-37. 1o3 See 'Report, Minutes of Proceedings, Resolutions etc. of the Meeting of Chief Inspectors of Stock' (Sydney, June, 1891), printed in Journal of the Legislative Councilof NSW, 49 (1891-92), Part 3, pp. 487 ft. For detailed discussion, see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 219-30. 1o4Victorian Royal Commission (footnote 90), Minutes of Evidence, pp. 824-31; Report, p. xvii. lo5 NSW Board of Health, Minutes ofProceedinos (NSW State Archives, 5/4936), 8, 15, 22 February, 1988; Dr W. C. Wilkinson to NSW Secretary for Lands. 9 February, 1888, printed in 'The Rabbit Pest', Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW, 43 (1887-88), Part 4, p. 693; The Australasian, 28 January, 1888, p. 188. lo6 An analysis of the MeGarvie Smith and Gunn modifications and its consequences is given in Jan Todd, 'From Paris to Narrandera: Adaptation in the Diffusion of Anthrax Vaccination in the Australian Pastoral Industry', Prometheus, 7, No. l (June, 1989), 32--48.
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scientific community were used as a measure of assessment of John Gunn's early work on preparation of a vaccine, and eligibility for the required licence. 1~ Fourthly, the formal communication channels of the scientific community were used as a forum for advocacy for and against both Pasteur's method and the cyanide patentee: ~
6. Technological research programmes and locations There were many ways, therefore, in which the local scientific enterprise acted as a resource for these technological systems, even when there was not any creation of 'new' knowledge. However, research programmes, scientific experiment, and theory construction were also present. We should note that as early as the 1870s, William Dixon had responded to an identified problem in gold production by initiating his own research programme aimed at developing a local technical solution, t 09 However, more common were: the initiation of adaptive research programmes to resolve problems arising from the interaction of imported technology with a new environment; and the initiation of comprehensive research programmes aimed at providing a more fundamental understanding of the operation of the imported technology. Thus Goyder's screening experiments shifted on to adaptive research aimed at improving the operation of the government cyanide plant and observations there led on to experiments to investigate the chemical mechanism at work: 1o In NSW, Storer and Mulholland both combined experimental attempts to make the cyanide process workable on refractory ores of NSW with experiments designed to reveal more clearly the major chemical mechanism of their reaction. 111 Donald Clark, Director of the Bairnsdale School of Mines, conducted experiments on the solubility of gold in cyanide as a contribution to understanding the conditions under which the process operated) t2 At Sydney University, Arthur Jarman and Ernest le Gay Brereton conducted a research programme on the use of ammonia as a means of making the process applicable to copper-bearing ores)13 William Dixon at the Sydney Technical College carried out experiments to undermine the selective action theory which safeguarded the British patentees, xx4 The NSW Government Metallurgist, James Taylor, and others, carried out experiments to test the hypothesis raised in the course of patent litigation that gold was not in fact soluble in cyanogen. ~~s Several users of the
lO7Professor T. P. Anderson Stuart, 'Anniversary Address', Journal and Proceedingsof the Royal Society of NSW,,28 (1894), 1-38, (p. 13); NSW Board of Health. Minutes of Proceedings(NSW State Archives, 5/49364942), 8, 29 July 1891. los F o r instance, Dr H. C. Wigg, 'The Rabbit Question', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 1, new series (1888), 28-33; Henry Deane,'Anniversary Address', Journal and Proceedingsof the Royal Society of NSW, 32 (1898), 1-54 (pp. 27-8). lO9W. A. Dixon, 'On a Method of Extracting Gold, Silver, and other Metals from Pyrites', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW, 11 (1877), 93-111. 11oA detailed account of the progression of Goyder's work is available in Todd (footnote 29), pp. 339-51. 111 Ibid., pp. 354-59. 112 Donald Clark, "Notes on the Solubility of Gold-Silver Alloys in Cyanide of Potassium Solution', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 1t, new series (1898), 47-51. 11aA. Jarman and E. le Gay Brereton, 'Laboratory Experiments on the Use of Ammonia and its Compounds in Cyaniding Cupriferous Ores and its Tailings', Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, 14 0904--4)5), 289-334; E. le Gay Brereton, 'The Ammonia-Copper-Cyanide Process', ibid., 15, (1905~6), 433-44. 114W. A. Dixon, 'Note on the so-called "Selective Action" of Cyanide of Potassium for Gold', Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, 6 (1897-98), 88-93. Also published in The Australian Technical Journal, March 28 (1898), 54-60. 11s NSW Department of Mines, Annual Report for 1897, Appendices A and B, pp. 22-3.
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J. Todd
process also conducted their own experiments in their own plants, some resulting in patents for modifications. Not least of such work were the programmes of continuous experimentation carried out in laboratory and plant by the large mining companies of Kalgoorlie. 116 Among the locations for research programmes there were: the laboratories of government analysts, which in South Australia coincided with the School of Mines, in Victoria with the Technological Museum; the laboratory of the NSW Government Metallurgist, at the government metallurgical works; private facilities available to McGarvie Smith, Gunn, Storer, Mulholland, and various users of the cyanide process; facilities set up on Rodd Island in Sydney Harbour by the government initially for the conduct of screening experiments by the Rabbit Commission; the laboratories of the technical part of the institutional infrastructure--the Bairnsdale School of Mines, the Sydpey Technical College; and finally, the chemical laboratories at Sydney University provided the location for the work of Jarman and Brereton. From the overall balance of these locations, there are indications that the incremental advances being made locally were emanating more from the production arena, or from that part of the institutional infrastructure which was at the junction of the productive base and the scientific enterprise, than from within the superstrucfure of the scientific enterprise itself. As for the reporting of results of the programmes, the formal channels of the local scientific superstructure were only occasionally in evidence. For anthrax, one paper to the Royal Society of NSW and one to the Australasian Medical Gazette ~x7 could not compare with the bulk of material communicated through the trade journal of the pastoral industry and the daily newspapers. Government authorized experimental work was reported in the Agricultural Gazette of NSW, published by the NSW Department of Agriculture. ~ls In the case of cyanide, the research carried out independently by the two scientists Storer and Mulholland on the use of bromine to accelerate the solution of gold in cyanide, was published largely through the pages of the mining industry journal, the Australian Mining Standard, in a debate carried on over a number of months)19 Mulholland then went on to publish through the New York periodical, the Engineering and Minino Journal, ~2~ but most of his communications were centred around the Bathurst Science Society, associated with the Bathurst Technical College, and the Sydney Technical College Mining and Metallurgy Society, some papers to which were also published in the Mining Standard. 12~ Similarly, while
116 For details of some user modifications in NSW, Victoria, and Kalgoorlie, see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 360-1, 366-70, 376-84. 117 A. Loir, 'Notes on the large death-rate among Australian sheep in country infected with Cumberland Disease or Splenic Fever', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW, 25 (1891), 46-51; J. McGarvie Smith and J. A. Gunn, 'Notes on Some Experiments on the Cure of Anthrax', Australasian Medical Gazette (21 August, 1889), 326-7. 1t s E.g.A. Loir and E. Stanley, 'The Susceptibility of the Kangaroo to Anthrax', Agricultural Gazette of NSW, 2 (1891), 206-7, 456-7. 119 Beginning in March 1895, this debate went through until August 1895. See, for instance, C. A. Mulholland, 'A Bromo-Cyardde Process. Improved Method of Treating Auriferous Ores', Australian Mining Standard, 13 April 1895, p. 213; 'The Bromo-Cyanide and Bromo-Hypochlorite Processes', ibid., 17 August, 1895, pp.463-4; J. Storcr, Letter to the Editor, Australian Mining Standard, 20, April, 1895, pp.226-7. 1 2 o C. A. Mulholland, 'A Bromo-Cyanide Process for Gold Extraction', Engineering and Mining Journal, 59, No. 22, (1 June, 1895), 510. 121 E.g.C.A. Mulholland, 'Some theoretical considerations in cyanide practice', Australian Mining Standard, 28 November, 1901, p. 838. This was one of four papers presented by Mulholland to the Sydney Technical College Mining and Metallurgy Society in the period 1901-1902. See Australian Technical Journal, (13 March, 1902), p. 63.
55
G. A. Goyder published one article on his experiments on the cyanide process with the Royal Society of South Australia, his other papers were published in the journal of the local Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers and the annual reports of the South Australian School of Mines, where he taught and performed his role of South Australian Government Analyst. 122 And while Dixon's work on selective action was presented to the institute of Mining and Metallurgy in Britain, it was published locally in the Australian Technical Journal circulated by the Sydney Technical College. 123 It would appear, then, that of the work which surfaced through published reports, not a great proportion came through the formal publications of the local scientific superstructure. Most came through a variety of other channels covering a spectrum from close to the central institutions of the local scientific, enterprise, such as the Transactions of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers, to much more peripheral communications, down to the industry trade journal, and even the daily newspapers. This applied even more so to discussion of the actual problem before the import of overseas technology aimed at its resolution. Dixon's work in the 1870s stands alone in the formal communications of science as evidence of attempts within the scientific superstructure to initiate any relevant research programme.
7. Features of the science-technology link In summarizing the science-technology link that emerges from the relationships revealed in the two cases of transferred science-based technology, it may not be too much to suggest, then, that it was characterized by the following features: 1. The scientific enterprise functioned more as an intellectual resource facilitating the local assessment, selection, entry, and assimilation of foreign frontier technology than in providing the intellectual content of new, local technological systems. 2. The facilitating role was associated with the introduction of technologies which represented a technological discontinuity with existing systems, i.e. the problem definition and the associated knowledge and skill base of the new technology were not simply an incremental movement along a linear path of development, but involved a major shift, both in the perception of the problem and in the knowledge and skills required to solve it. 3. This facilitating role was more likely to take place through interaction via the institutional infrastructure than directly from scientific superstructure to the productive base of the system. 4. Where the facilitating role included experimental programmes, they were more likely to be carried out, reported, and channelled either informally, or through the institutional infrastructure, than through the formal institutions of the scientific superstructure.
122G. A. Goyder, 'On Some Important Reactions of Double Cyanides Bearing Upon the Cyanide Process for the Extraction of Gold', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 19 (1895), 2~6; 'The Action of Cyanide of Potassium on Gold and Some Other Metals and Minerals', Transactions of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers, t (1893), p. 98; 'Notes on the working of the Macarthur-Forrest Process for Extracting Gold', ibid., 3 (1895), 159-77. Publications via the School of Mines included 'Memorandum of the Results of Some Trials made to Test the Extraction of Gold by Dilute Cyanide of Potassium with Different Samples of S. A. Ores', South Australian School of Mines, Annual Report for 1893, pp. 151~1; 'Report of Experiments on the Chemistry of the Cyanide Process, with Notes on the Working of the Process', ibid., 1894, pp. 147-58; 'Further Notes on the Chemistry of the Cyanide Process for Dissolving Gold', ibid., 1895, pp. 172-75. 123 See footnote 110.
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J. Todd 5. Experimental programmes were more likely to develop initially from screening and monitoring activities and move up to adaptive programmes and then on to comprehensive programmes than to be initiated at the comprehensive level. 6. Particularly significant in the facilitating role were those scientific personnel located within the government bureaucracy but operating at the juncture between the superstructure, the institutional infrastructure and the productive base. 7. As a result of these various features, any boost to the scientific enterprise through this process came from the 'bottom up' rather than the 'top down'. This was true in two senses, that of generating activity and support at the infrastructural level before the superstructure level, and also of generating research activity from screening through adaptation to more comprehensive research, rather than from the initiation of comprehensive research.
8. Conclusions: dependencies out of phase We might argue from this, then, that the technological system in Australia at this time was in fact running ahead of the development of the scientific enterprise, which was still more focused and dependent on a European centre. The technological system could therefore advance with the help of the scientific enterprise but run out of kilter with it. Technological dependence and scientific dependence were not necessarily moving in synchronization. Technological systems could be boosted by crossing technological discontinuities under imperatives from the economy: examples which might be cited include the need for physical infrastructure, which brought railways, telecommunications, and urban services such as clean water and electricity; the case studies discussed above concerned the necessity for the economy to move from extensive exploitation of resources to intensive exploitation. Thus during the 1890s the superstructure of the local scientific enterprise appeared to lose ground, losing audience and gaining nothing in the way of official support in a period of economic depression. At the same time technological development and independence was given greater strength by the need to exploit resources more efficiently in the process of recovery, the diffusion and adaptation of transferred technologies tending to enhance local technological capability.124 Even so, there were still gains to science from this process, though they were delayed and indirect. As new frontier technologies were imported, science initially contributed more as an intellectual and cultural bridge than as a source of intellectual creativity, hut helped shore up the sovereign decision-making capacity of the system. Through providing intellectual resources to productive systems as they passed across the divide from technologies with virtually no scientific element to incorporate substantial scientific components, the scientific enterprise won a niche in the institutional infrastructure, from which some experimental programmes could be initiated and from which well-placed scientists could reinforce the facilitating role of science and help carve out a path of future support for science. In this sense, the scientific enterprise in Australia probably developed more from its interaction with technological systems than from its own internal dynamics. It was, for instance, a coalescence of forces at the
124An in-depth study of how this technological capability was enhanced in these two case studies is given in Todd (footnote 29), Chapter 4 and Chapter 7.
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socio-economic level in the 1880s and 1890s, of which the effects of anthrax was one, which hastened infrastructural support for microbiology ahead of its superstructural development. 125 Basalla's 1967 paper on the transmission of science from Europe has become a classic because it provided a broad framework within which it became possible to discern and order the patterns of development of peripheral science. It also provided a signpost to the significance of technology by suggesting that in this process of development, one of the essential 'tasks' which needed to be accomplished en route to independent science was the provision of a 'proper technological base'. At the time Basalla indicated his inability, given the current state of knowledge of the connections between science and technology, to provide a clear explanation, suggesting only that transferred technology could be see~n as 'vectors of Western civilisation carrying Western science, medicine, and technical skills '126 into the interior of new lands. In a sense, MacLeod wanted to convey something similar by invoking the images implied in the 'moving metropolis', but he emphasized the political power and control also embodied in these 'vectors', and hence took the political unit, such as the British Empire, as the dominant focus. While MacLeod provided a timely reminder of the subtleties and power of cultural assumptions, ideologies, and loyalties, with Inkster this essay would suggest that a distinction needs to be made between non-Western lands which already had established technological and cultural systems, of whatever kind, and those which were nominally 'empty'. Regions of recent settlement have had some natural advantages for assimilating Western science and frontier technology in that the source of these has substantially coincided with the source of institutional, cultural, and labour inputs, thereby avoiding the difficulties confronting the merging of widely divergent systems. 12~ In these cases, therefore, it was not so much that technology carried Western civilization; that flowed in naturally through the process of migration. More significant could be the fact that the imperative for technology transfer was not simply for catching up, but for growing, and was not simply for replacing old technology, but for building the technological bulk of the system. Technological dependence was therefore more inevitable, more pressing and more pervasive than elsewhere. On the other hand, the relatively free flow of compatible cultural resources could ease the process, but in a particular way. In catch-up European industrialization, the development of scientific culture and scientific institutions was running ahead of, or alongside, the development of technological independence. But where a system is being built from the ground up, priorities are more basic and cultural resources more scarce. Here scientific culture is more likely to flow in with the migration of people and technology, and to develop informally from the 'bottom up', rather than through 'top-down' development of the formal institutions of the scientific enterprise. Furthermore, the impetus for this bottom-up development is more likely to come from indirect contributions to the development of the technological system, and is more likely to occur where technology transfer crosses a technological discontinuity.
12s For indications of how this process operated in the case of microbiology, see Todd (footnote 29), pp. 499-500, and Inkster and Todd (footnote 24), pp. 122-5. 126 Basalla (footnote 8), p. 620. 127Jarrell, having also made the distinction between the different types of colonies, makes a similar point in Richard A. Jarrell, 'Differential National Development and Science in the Nineteenth Century: The Problems of Quebec and Ireland', in Reingold and Rothenberg (footnote 69), 323-50 (p. 329).
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MacLeod was right to point out the vulnerability of Australian scientific development to the desires and interests of Empire. He was also right to remind us of the possibility that development is not necessarily uni-directional or linear. Inkster added to our understanding on another dimension by reminding us that the development of different components of the scientific enterprise did not necessarily coincide chronologically. We might now say that there is also no necessity for scientific and technological dependence and development to move in harmony, or even in the same direction. It seems likely that in a region of recent settlement the development of the scientific enterprise and its capacity for independence would run behind the development of aspects of technological capability and independence. Nevertheless, it might be that as the imperatives of socio-economic development in an immature technological system were faced, and particularly when the economy passed from the stage of extensive exploitation to intensive exploitation, a colonial science which could form an intellectual bridge across technological discontinuities created by the import of frontier technologies, could start to gain a more secure institutional foothold in an environment of strained resources, even if its heart still belonged to Europe. If this is so, then the focus of studies on the history of science should take a wider view than the people and institutions which made up the'superstructure of science, and turn a more open eye to the connecting institutional layers below, which acted as a conduit for integrating the scientific enterprise into the broad stream of production and society--a function which Basalla saw 25 years ago as vitally necessary to the mitigation of scientific dependence at the periphery.

Science in The Periphery, Australia - Todd

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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 50 (1993), 33--58

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Australian scientific and technolooical development

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Australian scientific and technological development

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o w n j o u r n a l s . 't3 Then, as government moved beyond the location of resources to their

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Australian scientific and technological development

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Australian scientific and technological development

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Australian scientific and technological development

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Australian scientific and technological development

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