ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Whence ‘Physical Astronomy’? Mapping Disciplinary Boundaries of Astronomical Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Europe

• In Event: Models, Concepts and Boundaries in the 19th and Early 20th Century

English Abstract

The rise of astrophysics in the mid-nineteenth century is frequently portrayed as a rupture with traditional positional astronomy: it is often emphasised that spectroscopy granted astronomers unprecedented insight into the physical and chemical natures of celestial bodies, which had previously been considered beyond the scope of possible astronomical knowledge. Recently, however, historians have called into question the sharpness of this divide. This paper argues that the possibility of obtaining knowledge of celestial bodies’ physical natures was accepted — and, indeed, pursued — by astronomers prior to the advent of spectroscopy, demonstrating that astronomy was in some respects ‘physical’ before the development of astrophysics.

The research of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel and John Herschel, among others, illustrates that some astronomers in the first half of the nineteenth century were concerned with questions of celestial bodies’ structures, compositions, and morphological developments. This formed an early tradition of ‘physical astronomy’ which was distinct in its practices and conclusions from later astrophysics, but which still furnished astronomers with physical knowledge of celestial bodies. There were, however, some areas of inquiry which were considered outside the limits of scientific astronomy, such as ascertaining the existence of life on other worlds. This points to two sets of boundaries that nineteenth-century astronomers negotiated: between what belonged to astronomy proper and what belonged to other physical sciences, and between what was considered within the realm of scientific inquiry and what was not. Along these lines, the paper proposes mapping of the astronomical sciences in the nineteenth century.

Author

• Nichole Levesley, University of Cambridge