ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Ground Truth: From Local Data to Global Theories of the Earth

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Earth and environmental scientists have consistently worked from local observations and specific samples, yet many of their most influential concepts—sea level, deep time, the atmosphere, "the climate"—operate at a global scale. With the rise of more physical and instrument-heavy approaches, the reliance on locally specific studies remained the access point for much of the earth sciences. If anything, tension between local practice and global claims has become increasingly pronounced, as global-scale concepts continued to gain importance and prominence.
This session concentrates on physical sciences of the Earth – studies of radioactivity and time, long-term retreat of the oceans, the measurement and mathematical representation of physical parameters across global scales – and asks how they relate to more historical earth sciences such as geology and paleontology. We use the interplay between local work and global concepts as an entry point to critically engage with the historiography of the earth and environmental sciences. We ask: how do scientists justify moving from particular field sites or samples to universal statements about the Earth? How do specific places, samples, come to count as globally representative? And why do scientists attempt this shift to the global scale?
This approach allows us to treat the scientific and political dimensions of earth sciences as connected and perhaps inseparable: the methods that enable claims about "the Earth" are bound up with the political, institutional, and colonial contexts that determine which samples are accessible, which sites are considered authoritative, and whose observations count. By examining how "global" theories construct particular visions of a universal Earth based on specific samples and locations, we can critically historicize these claims while illuminating a central methodological challenge of the earth sciences.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Simon Naylor, University of Glasgow

Individual Presentations

• The Retreat of the Planet's Oceans, from Dante to Suess: from Everyday Observations to Concepts, the Circulation of Knowledge and the Creation of Fears - Marianne Klemun, University of Vienna

• The Physical Geosciences in the 19th Century: Global Sciences and their Contexts - Gregory A Good, Retired

• Discordant Measurements and Models of Concordance in Mid-Century Geochronology - Nanina Foehr, LMU Munich