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Book Review
| The Machine in Neptune's Garden: Historical Perspectives on Technology and the Marine Environment. Edited by Helen M. Rozwadowski and David K. van Keuren. Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2004. 399 pp. Bibliographical references and index. Cloth $49.95.
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| This book is a most welcome contribution to the history of the marine environment. Those interested in the history of oceanography will be familiar with edited volumes from international congresses, which are expansive in subject matter and authorship, with limited usefulness to historians. In contrast, The Machine in Neptune's Garden is drawn from the third Matthew Fontaine Maury Workshop in the History of Oceanography, and all of the authors seem determined to address questions in which historians, rather than scientists, take an abiding interest. |
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As the title suggests, this book takes its cue from Leo Marx's influential book, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford, 1964). But whereas Marx focused on the intrusion of industrial technology into the pastoral landscape, this volume is concerned with the use of technology to learn about—and often to exploit—an environment that otherwise is beyond our reach. The authors of the introduction, which include the editors and Keith R. Benson, point out a trend from direct access toward facilitated, indirect technological access, from the nineteenth-century tides gauges of George Biddell Airy (discussed by Michael S. Reidy) to the buoy arrays linked by satellite (Gregory T. Cushman). Other subjects include oceanic modeling (Eric T. Mills and Christine Keiner), scientists and the Navy (Gary E. Weir and Kathleen Broome Williams), radioisotopes as tools (Ronald Rainger), deep-sea drilling (David K. van Keuren), fisheries acoustics (Vera Schwach), and an artificial island for research (Helen M. Rozwadowski). The essays reveal the interdisciplinarity of oceanography, the disparate interests in the sea and its uses, and the dependence on technology to construct knowledge of the sea. The "garden," one participant in the workshop suggested, may be the technology itself. |
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The interplay of technology and science at sea allows these scholars to highlight themes that environmental historians will find useful. One is oceanic culture, characterized by the need to survive at sea as much as gain knowledge. Weir and Williams both analyze the interplay of scientists and the military during World War II. Van Keuren demonstrates the conservatism and resistance to innovation in ocean engineering culture, particularly in the failed ocean-drilling operation, Project Mohole. Many essays address promises about the exploitation of resources. Schwach shows Norwegians adopting acoustical methods to enhance fisheries research; Rainger sees radioactivity as a vehicle to secure political power; and Rozwadowski suggests that scientists had their frontier mentality tempered by the growth of environmentalism. |
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These are just a few themes in a volume that is rich in ideas about science, technology, and the environment. This book was dedicated to Philip F. Rehbock, whose death in 2002 deprived the history of the marine sciences of one of its pioneers. Compounding this loss was the tragic hit-and-run accident in 2004 that took the life of David van Keuren, one of the editors of this volume and the cofounder of the Maury workshops. Their influence is palpable in this volume and upon the community that produced it. For those interested in making contributions to the growing historical literature on the marine environment, this book will be indispensable. |
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Jacob Darwin Hamblin teaches the history of science at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science (Washington, 2005). |
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