From Science in the Arctic to Arctic Science: A Transnational Study of Arctic Travel Narratives, 1818-1883
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the making and communicating of knowledge about the Arctic from a transnational perspective between 1818 and the First International Polar Year in 1882-83. By examining both well-known and hitherto neglected narratives from Danish, British, and British-Canadian Arctic explorations, I show that changes in ideas about what it meant to be an authoritative observer of Arctic phenomena were linked to tensions in imperial ambitions, national identity, and international collaboration. By framing polar surveying in the broadest sense as the ordering and quantifying of nature through travel, I analyse how abstract notions of the Arctic became tangible in the nineteenth century. I am concerned with the practices of writing the Arctic experience, especially the relationship between science, and the strategies for constructing a trustworthy narrative voice. That is, I investigate the ways in which the identities of the explorers and the organizing bodies shaped the expeditions, and by extension the representation of the ventures, the explorers, and the science they produced. In doing so, I argue that the Arctic played a key role in shaping Western science, and understandings of national and imperial identities, and that travel narratives were a significant resource for communicating this knowledge. This thesis is divided into four chapters that each considers three case studies, roughly organized according to chronology. Drawing on major themes within British and Danish imperial history, Canadian studies, studies in travel writing, history of science, transnational and global history, and environmental studies, I show how perceptions of the Arctic as a field-site for the production of scientific knowledge varied according to time and place throughout the nineteenth century, and how this influenced science in the Arctic. In particular, I show the shift from early scientific practices during Arctic explorations, to a more unified Arctic science as part of the International Polar Year. What emerges is a new and interdisciplinary look at how science was produced in the Arctic, how this information was perceived by both a specialist and general reading audiences, and how this process differed depending on national and cultural contexts at different points in the nineteenth century.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".