Knowledge, Culture, and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817–1970 by Simon Baatz

Abstract

204 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and for the 19th century, contains much new and detailed information. So too do the catalog entries proper. These are models of their kind, providing a complete technical description of the instrument in ques­ tion, details of the life of its maker, and careful consideration of dating problems, which are always present since few chronometers carry dates. In some cases this has led Anthony Randall to go well beyond the existing literature to provide, as in the cases of Thomas Earnshaw and Josiah Emery, numbering sequences plotted against date for their entire output. Only detailed use of the book can allow the reader to appreciate the wealth of detailed knowledge and authorial skills and acumen that are here displayed. Although the catalog is demandingly technical, assuming a good knowledge of horology on the part of its reader, help for the uninformed and the forgetful is provided by the long and detailed glossary, the dozens of impeccably clear diagrams by David Penney, and the generally excellent and occasionally outstanding photographs by Steven Pitkin. An extensive, though not complete, bibliography and a generally reliable index (which, however, excludes anything and everybody mentioned in the glossary) complete the book, which is clearly printed and pleasant to use, despite an unfortunate choice of background for the diagrams on the endpapers and the quite hideous blue used for the half-titles to the different sections of the book. The binding, although probably stain-resistant, is perhaps rather weak for a book of this size and weight. In combination with R. T. Gould’s classic work on the technical evolution of the chronometer of 1921 and with a number of more recent, detailed studies of individual makers such as the three volumes by Vaudrey Mercer devoted to the Arnolds, the Frodshams, and Dent, ample, if still incomplete, materials are now available for more interpre­ tative analyses to be undertaken not only of the technical development of the chronometer, but also of the socioeconomic context in which this development took place. Apart from the massive quantity of new material that this excellent book makes available, thus revitalizing the subject, it challenges exploitation of it in a manner worthy of the way in which it is here presented. A. J. Turner Mr. Turner writes on the history of precision technology in Europe from antiquity to the 19th century. Knoiuledge, Culture, and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817-1970. By Simon Baatz. NewYork: NewYork Academy of Sciences, 1990. Pp. ix+269; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00 (cloth or paper). This well-written history of a major urban scientific institution is much broader in scope than one usually expects from a sponsored study. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 205 Simon Baatz, who has previously studied scientific organizations in Phila­ delphia, uses the academy as a focus for an account of the institutions and individuals that have shaped science in New York City over the 150 years following the founding in 1817 of the Lyceum ofNatural History, the name by which the New York Academy of Sciences was first known. Founded as an organization that was to be “democratic, egalitarian, and non-exclusive” (p. 9), the lyceum had dreams of serving as a multipurpose scientific institution for the city—at once museum, re­ source for scientific research, and disseminator of scientific knowledge. As Baatz pursues its history, especially as he details its relationships with other city institutions, one sees each of these roles being assumed by some other entity more attuned to changes in the world of science—the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, specialist societies. In 1876, the lyceum responded by changing its name to the NewYork Academy of Sciences and began its evolution into a modern umbrellatype organization, or federation of societies. This process was basically complete by 1907, when an earlier “alliance” died and the academy became an official “parent” society with specialist societies serving as “sections” while maintaining their own individuality. In recent years the academy has carved out a new role for itself which takes account of key features of modern science—its ubiquity, its huge size, and its tendency to be...