Before the “Black Box”: The Inputs and Outputs of Nineteenth-century Deep-sea Science

Abstract

Nineteenth-century investigations of the deep sea provide a case study for black box science. Naturalists were forced to theorize about a space for which they had no direct sensory observations. This study traces the emergence of bathymetry and deep-sea biology and then analyzes how men of science dealt with the uncertainty associated with their black box practices. I argue that these investigators created multiple types of black boxes based on their uncertainties and that these black boxes did not operate equivalently. Consequently, scholars should be aware of the different categories of black boxes when they describe scientific practices.