Keywords

1 Introduction

In his Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad (Geikie 1882), the Scottish geologist and historian of geology Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924), General Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain from 1882, published a collection of essays that had previously appeared in several journals. He remembered his experiences during his geological journey to Wyoming: “after landing in New York my preparations for a journey to the Far West were completed… A project which had been little more than a dream for many years was now at last actually realised” (Geikie 1882: 180). He did not refrain from emphasizing in particular: “Let me briefly explain the project, that the purport of the journey, and of the following notes, may be understood. And first I would give the reader due warning that the object of the expedition was not sport or adventure, but science. My companion and I were not, indeed, wholly unarmed. To go without at least revolvers into these western wilderness would, we were told, be sheer Folly” (Geikie 1882: 180).

Why did Geikie exclude sport and adventure commonly associated with expeditions, and why did he want to affirm the demarcation of both from doing science, when his narrative invoked elements that essentially accompanied the practice of outdoor experiences during expeditions and surveys conducted by his colleagues? A common feature is that expeditions were ventures based on a calculated risk. It is a key objective of any endeavor to minimize the risks from the very outset, and to be armed meant that the explorer calculated the danger appropriate to the situation. It could be argued that adventurism and sport were not among the “epistemic virtues” (Daston and Galison 2007) in Geikie’s view of the ideal geologist. But we have to remember that fieldwork was essential to the making of the new earth sciences from 1760 to 1840, prior to Geikie’s statement. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison explain “epistemic virtues” as a manifestation of the scientific self that is grounded in the cultivation of a specific discipline or a group in terms of which it is understood as being essential to achieve knowledge in the first place. “Epistemic virtues” can apply to an academic discipline, but also to a “thought collective” (Fleck) within a discipline. In terms of adventure, expeditions and fieldwork tended to be associated with openness to the unexpected and the pursuit of realism. Furthermore, the convention of establishing credibility as an outdoor geologist was not important at this specific stage of Geikie’s career. After the establishment of geological surveys in Europe, beginning with the British in 1835, these survey geologists were an increasingly more visible group in most western countries. They were trained through fieldwork, taught the next generation, traveled and did fieldwork, and felt themselves to be professionals, distinct from other geologists working in smaller numbers at universities and museums, who were more closely associated with amateurs (Oldroyd 1996: 329). It is well known, however, that the boundaries between professionals and amateurs were not fixed, but depended on the process of institutionalization throughout the nineteenth century and were therefore reciprocal. Nevertheless, they were productive and changed in different contexts and at different times (Gieryn 1999). To return to Geikie’s quote: Geikie had been working his way through the British Geological Survey from 1855, and in 1871, he became the first Murchison Professor at University of Edinburgh (1871–1881).

Following Ludwik Fleck’s concept of “thought style” shared by a “thought collective” (Fleck 1935/1979), it can be argued that geological travelers prioritized practicality and everyday practices over a sense of adventure during their fieldwork. Epistemic virtues, as defined by Daston and Galison, can also be seen as dimensions shaping the thought collective. Thus the two concepts can used in conjunction with each other. One can also make the case, like Kohler, that field research has not been given due recognition by the history of science compared to laboratory experimentation in terms of status acquisition. This also influenced Geikie, who was interested in the history of geology. Expeditions were often seen by the public as purely adventurous explorations. This, however, was not relevant for a geologist affiliated with an institutionalized survey in terms of his or her self-presentation, despite the fact that geologists were participating in an increased number of expeditions. They were surveying territories outside Europe and were part of the exploration of previously unknown spaces (Bourguet 1997). And, even more boldly, by the end of the nineteenth century they focused on altitude, much like mountaineers, in order to identify the geology of the Himalayas or the Arctic (Jones 1875; Brescius 2019).

The ambivalence of Geikie’s narratives raises many questions and presents a challenging constellation between two phenomena – expeditions and fieldwork – their relationship in different historical contexts, and the question of how earth sciences can be positioned in this framework. It must be noted that this constellation is far more intricate than the dichotomous narrative suggests at first glance. When Peter Sloterdijk, in his philosophical considerations of globalism, describes a type of scientific journey, an expedition, as an “epistemological form of adventurism” (Sloterdijk 2006: 152), he is referring to a famous common phenomenon and an important connection between the spatial frame and the search for new knowledge that made expeditions so attractive to naturalists and the public. According to Sloterdijk, these global enterprises were accompanied by social and spatial exclusion and inclusion. What is often overlooked, however, are aspects that lead us to the scientific enterprise in the narrower sense: The ‘as yet unknown’ first had to be identified as such in the preparations for an expedition, enabling it to be integrated into exploratory questions. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientific collectives and institutions with a claim to leadership, such as academies and scientific societies, institutionalized surveys, ultimately determining exploratory aims and spatial-cognitive definitions of these gaps in knowledge. The anchoring of the factual non-knowledge that mutually conditioned the scientific enterprise and expeditionary activity was of central importance. These preliminary considerations were incorporated into the instructions issued by the institutions and principals behind an expedition while the transformation from not knowing to knowing was similarly celebrated by the protagonists in narratives, newspapers, and books.

The following sections discuss three thematic clusters that illustrate the heterogeneity of expeditions and fieldwork in the development of earth sciences. First, both are essentially connected to practices. Second, we have to explore the question of space and place in relation to expeditions and fieldwork, and third, the interplay between practices and scientific discourse, or theory and fieldwork (observation), needs to be analyzed. All three perspectives help us understand what was specific to the science of geology in terms of fieldwork and expeditions that also involved other sciences.

2 Defining Scientific Expeditions

In older historical handbooks of geology, which mainly focused on ideas (Geikie 1905; Gohau 1990; Oldroyd 1996), both expeditions and fieldwork were not explicitly included as a category or were not discussed together. Let us first look at expeditions from a general point of view. Much has been written about expeditions by historians from a national, post-colonial, or environmental perspective (Driver 2005; Stuhl 2016). From the seventeenth century, expeditions have played a significant role in acquiring knowledge about the world and bolstering imperialism (Miller and Reill 1996; Nielsen et al. 2012). As Roy MacLeod points out, expeditions and science became inextricably intertwined over the course of the nineteenth century (MacLeod 2009). They had their heyday as spectacular and heroic endeavors during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Expeditions can be considered enterprises governed by metropolitan “centres of calculation” (Latour 1987). The traditional attention focused on the heroic European explorer has increasingly been replaced by critics of colonialism (MacKenzie 1990; Gascoigne 1998; Palladino and Worboys 1993) and by interest in organizational aspects (Anderson 2018). The focus has shifted from the performance of the individual to the connection among the participants. In this context, historians have given particular attention to communication with local people during the expedition. Traveling in connection with fieldwork is a cultural technique that is central to the practices of earth sciences. However, if we adopt a wider notion of expedition that also includes travel and mobility, we must consider the meaning of an expedition and how we can understand the role of expeditions in this wider sense for the development of geology. The term “expeditio” in Latin refers to a campaign, completion, or execution. In the German administrative bureaucratic context, the term “Expedieren” means dispatch, take care, complete. This refers to the meticulous scientific preparation for an expedition, which influenced both the journey and the expedition itself (Klemun 2012; Thomas 2015a, b). Instructions issued by the institutions and principals behind an expedition became a distinct genre (Despoix 2005). There is a connection between the formation of geology and the emergence of manuals providing specific guidance for practicing geologists during the eighteenth century. These guidebooks outlined the essential requirements for specific practices and interactions in nature (Vaccari 2007). In this respect, every journey that meets these requirements, especially in the sense of having a specific elaborated image of practices and a clear target, can be understood as an expedition. What can be classified as expeditions encompasses journeys of individual travelers, who embarked on short-term expeditions to well-known areas, to the great expeditions lasting several years with the aim of exploring previously undiscovered regions of the world or uncharted places in nature. In order to emphasize this diversity, the term “scientific expedition” could be used as an umbrella term. It defines a culturally and historically specific mission carried out by a group of individuals with specific work tasks, guided by “epistemic virtues” and with the aim of reducing the unknown as well as systematically acquiring, collecting, and documenting knowledge (Klemun and Spring 2016). “Thought collectives” (Fleck 1935/1979) played an important role in the planning of the expeditions and in the evaluation of the documentation.

3 Practices

3.1 Field and Laboratory

Let us first have a look at a concept suggested by Kuklick and Kohler which changed the understanding of field research on a general level (Kuklick and Kohler 1996, Kohler 2002). Kohler and Kuklick have valorized fieldwork as a practice by positing it in relation to laboratory research. The laboratory has long been privileged in the history of science. In contrast to the field, the laboratory is characterized by a culturally defined “placelessness”, since, from the point of view of place as an analytical category, laboratories are independent of their surroundings. Their detachment from nature is marked by control, repeated intervention and domination, simplification, normalization and standardization, formalization and production. In contrast, the practice of fieldwork involves movement, observation, collection, description, and representation (Nielsen et al. 2012). Thus, the field implies, according to Kuklick and Kohler, an ideal-typical scenario of direct engagement with the environment.

Today, field research is no longer viewed as separate from laboratory work, but rather as an interaction between the two. However, the field has no direct influence because field researchers are exposed to a plethora of natural variables, which means overload and irritation. It would be naïve to assume that natural scientists engaged with nature without prior theoretical considerations or preoccupations, particularly as observation is theory-guided and theory-laden (Duhem 1998). On the other hand, practices are “embedded in procedures, routines and knowledge, which guide without fully prescribing the way” (Bourguet et al. 2002). This is where Ludwik Fleck’s concept of a “thought collective” and the influence of group pressure come into play. Historians of science could interpret this idea in relation to the interconnected practices of fieldwork, laboratory work, and the storage of instruments, materials, and bodies. As Latour has demonstrated, during a pedological-botanical excursion in the Amazon region, a cascade of epistemic contexts occurred in which neither pure field research nor pure laboratory work could succeed. He emphasized how the natural situation was shaped by the use of mapping instruments, recording, labeling, and a type of “proto-laboratory” that preceded actual field research (Latour 1999: 36).

In nineteenth-century geological fieldwork, the selection of topographical maps and their scales, as well as preparatory work, played an important pre-structuring role. We can understand this practice as a mode of the “proto-laboratory” that was a prerequisite for field research. The sorting and preparation of a collection of rocks at a cultural location formed a synopsis of the discoveries made in the field, and at the same time the original determinants of the natural objects were also present. This means that Latour favored using mutually complementary research strategies of laboratory and field research.

Klemun and Spring (2016) have addressed the question of the extent to which the laboratory was present in the field on expeditions in a very different way from the dichotomy between experiment and fieldwork. They have proposed understanding expeditions as experiments, serving as a heuristic tool that offers substantial benefits. Experiments provide a platform for testing new constellations in gaining knowledge, new practices, new organizational forms, identification, and objectives. In addition, they are also centers of negotiation, eliminating the dichotomy of center and periphery, and offering spaces for cooperation. We can consider circumnavigations of the globe and their ships as a laboratory and as a central reference point for mobile field research, particularly since in this floating laboratory the previously selected natural phenomena had already been prepared, identified, labeled, and thereby transformed into “epistemic objects” (Rheinberger 1997). So there is a close connection between field and laboratory research in museums (Kohler 2007: 1–17), surveys, and collections at universities, on ships, in tents or stations during and after the expedition. It is also methodologically essential that both in the laboratory and the field, the physical presence of the researcher contributes to scientific knowledge. As with all living beings, those conducting research in the field are inevitably influenced by the environment and have a reciprocal relationship with it. In geology this manifests itself in the fact that journeys, explorations, and surveys take place in the summer – only in one particular season — while the work of synthesis takes place in the centers over the winter (Rudwick 1985: 40). To equip geologists for fieldwork, a particular form of compulsory clothing developed over the course of the nineteenth century, which also distinguished traveling geologists externally from teaching professors or members of an academy, where uniforms were common. In sum, it is important to understand the relationship between the laboratory and the field as central to the expedition phenomenon.

3.2 The Value of Travel, Instructions, and the Emergence of Fieldwork in Establishing Geology

The immediate link between geology and fieldwork is taken for granted by today’s geologists in the classical setting. However, from a historical viewpoint, fieldwork was not always a given and had to be introduced and accepted epistemically among researchers as a means of knowledge production. This happened toward the end of the eighteenth century, when fieldwork-based earth science began to be established through a new respected practice: traveling. It is no coincidence that those researchers who were among the pioneers in conducting fieldwork in ‘mineralogy’ (at the time, they were not referred to as ‘geologists’ but rather as naturalists, ‘oryctologists,’ or ‘geognosts’ in German-speaking countries) and had an interest in gaining knowledge of the internal structures of rock formations also produced their own travel instructions.

In early modern times, travel already played a significant role in the professional life of many researchers. One example of this is Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686), who is readily acclaimed in accounts of the history of geology as “central to the birth of science” (Gohau 1990: 570). Steno traveled to Italy, France, and the Netherlands. In particular, he visited the famous mines in Banská Štiavnica, today in Slovakia. But this is not the important point in this context, as researchers have always traveled for a variety of reasons, including education, training, or curiosity. Only the explicit recognition of travel as a specific practical means of advancing geological knowledge is crucial for this transformation. This was accompanied by the epistemic appreciation of fieldwork (Rudwick 2005), which was reflected in the emergence of introductory books between 1760 and 1840. This new genre, whose rise can also be seen as related to the development of geology as a discipline (Vaccari 2007), was designed to assist natural history researchers in their travels and observations. Among them were John Woodward’s Brief Instructions for Making Observations (1696, 1728), Carl von Linné’s Instructio Peregrinatoris (1760), Theodore Benedict de Saussure’s Agenda (1796), de Motte Hacquet’s Instructions for Being on the Way (1796: 222–246), Christian Carl Andrè’s Anleitung zum Studium der Mineralogie (1804), Cyperien Prosper Brard’s Manuel du Minéralogiste (1805), Georg Gottlieb Pusch’s Geognostischer Katechismus (1819), Ami Boué’s Guide du Géologue-Voyageur (1835–1836), Henry De la Beche’s A Geological Manual (1831), Karl Caesar Leonhard’s Agenda Geognostica (1838), and Charles Darwin’s Geology as part of A Manual of Scientific Inquiry (1849). The titles of these introductory books reflect a shift from mere mountaineering expeditions to geognostic or geological ventures.

Initially, the focus was on the practice of collecting natural phenomena while at the same time ensuring no common features were overlooked in a certain area (as in Woodward’s work). Soon, a growing number of proposals were made as to what criteria should be taken into account when observing the surface of the earth. Central to this was the characterization of the surface forms of mountains and valleys that had to be addressed by means of research questions.

Horace Bénédict de Saussure’s Agenda ou tableau général des Observations (Agenda or General Table of Observations) was given particular importance, not only by his contemporaries but also by research publications written by historians of geology. This was partly due to the fact that it was very well received and translated into German and English (Carozzi 2000). The Scottish geologist Charles Lyell also advised his students to travel, travel, and keep on traveling, as the most important requirement for the work of a geologist (Lyell 1830–33: 202–215).

The development of fieldwork and the establishment of geology as an academic discipline over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was accompanied by the emergence of guidebooks. Specific tools played a central role, which is discussed in more detail in the next section.

3.3 Instruments in the Field: The geologist’s Hammer as Tool, Sign, Badge, and Emblem of the Geological Profession

Saussure considered the geologist’s hammer the most important piece of equipment, soon overtaking the wedge, the chisel, and the tongs. The predecessor of the geologist’s hammer was the mountaineer’s or miner’s hammer, from which the newly designed geologist’s hammer was already distinct by the end of the eighteenth century, when its form was being perfected and discussed in instruction books (Klemun 2011). Saussure did not have himself portrayed in the seclusion of his studies, but outdoors with his working equipment and the hammer, which can be seen as an indicator of a new iconography of geology as a discipline to be practiced as fieldwork (Klemun 2000; Rudwick 2005). Previously, naturalists had preferred to be portrayed in their workrooms or, at best, surrounded by books in their libraries. Drawings of various forms of the hammer were published in instruction manuals as patterns or models from which a blacksmith could make a hammer on order. In fact, the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century is replete with evidence of great interest in, and constant demand for, the special design and production of hammers for geologists. In the course of the assimilation of this practical tool into scientific practice, the simple miner’s hammer mutated into the geologist’s hammer, with its special meaning associated with the specific profession and today widely used as a logo by scientific geological organizations (Klemun 2011). From the twentieth century, the hammer has been produced industrially. To this today, it serves as an identity marker for the geological profession; no other science has such a well-known tool, sign, and badge.

As early as 1980, the historian of science Derek J. de Solla Price criticized earlier studies of tools, pointing to the “blatant and naive insistence that scientific instruments arose as tools for measurement … . and testing hypothesis by experiment” (Price 1980: 75). Historians of science today understand tools as “mediators” (Meinel 2000: 11) and emphasize processes of mediation. The geologist’s hammer is one of many instruments that is not suited for exact measurement. Since the emergence of photography as an important documentation tool in the second half of the nineteenth century, the hammer has been used to indicate the size of rocks and structures. It is also a special tool for the investigation of rock formations, employed in the field to break up rocky outcrops and obtain manageable fragments with new fracture surfaces. It is also used in the search for fossils. The famous petrographer Hans Höfer von Heimhalt (1843–1924) gave a succinct and unambiguous explanation of the use of the hammer in his Instructions on Geological Observation, Mapping and Profiling, published repeatedly from 1915 onward and originally intended for his students at the Mining Academy in Leoben (Styria, Austria). As Höfer explained, “the hammer is not only used to break and crush the rock formation but also to format it: this consists of bringing the rock samples into a rectangular shape and achieving at least one fresh fracture line” (Höfer 1915: 17). The high esteem in which the hammer was held as a sign of fieldwork was devalued when theory as such regained value among contemporaries. Over the course of nineteenth century, the long-term devaluation of the hammer in the explorer’s arsenal inevitably followed the process of professionalization and the increasing importance of theoretical questions in geology. For example, when James Geikie, brother of Archibald Geikie, professor in Edinburgh and later president of the Geological Society of London from 1890, pointed out “the failure of geologists to furnish an adequate theory” of the question of the causes of cosmic changes in climate, he spoke condescendingly of “our hammer-bearers” (Geikie 1874: 110), suggesting that many practitioners and fieldworkers had a narrow empirical focus and lacked theoretical imagination (Klemun 2011).

Many surveys equipped their geologists with geologist’s hammers bearing the institution’s logo. In the sense of Ludwik Fleck’s “Denkkollektiv” (Fleck 1935/1979), this equipment underlined collective solidarity. The geologist’s hammer is a striking symbol of fieldwork, but it is also important to consider the historical context in which it appeared and the meaning that contemporaries ascribed to it.

3.4 The Increasing Importance of Field Practice: The Life of a Protagonist

The increasing importance of field research to geological practice during the eighteenth century was also evident in the generation of naturalists who increasingly identified themselves as geologists (Rudwick 2005). Let us take a look at one protagonist who represents the period in which geology came into being and in which fieldwork gradually became more important. The life of Nicolas Desmarest (1725–1815) is a prime example of this change, as Ken Taylor’s source-critical historical work demonstrates. Initially, Desmarest had educated himself exclusively by reading classical texts and was “primarily interested in the distribution of mountain ranges throughout the world” (Taylor 1969: 342). In the next phase of his self-fashioning, he began to collect mineral specimens for utilitarian purposes and participated in the “promenades savantes” organized by Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777) in the countryside around Paris (Taylor 2001: 59). Botanists had established a special tradition of fieldwork decades earlier (Allen 1976; Larsen 1996). Field experience came about through the development, learning and refining of skills, and there was a growing awareness among this generation of geologists “regarding the cultivation of appropriate empirical methods of investigation, symbolized (but not confined to) the act of geological fieldwork” (Taylor 2001: 59). The year-long journey to Italy in 1765–1766 as the companion of the Duc Louis-Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld can be seen as a further manifestation of the increasing intensification of fieldwork in Desmarest’s life. Travels to Italy were also important for other geologists of his time: the establishment of contacts, direct discussions with Italian experts in the field, and the confrontation with a different and geologically diverse country were the main features. This experience led to the realization that “distinctions among successful formations” (Taylor 1995: 107) and agents that destroyed them were essential. A further increase in the importance of fieldwork came with the desire to map the Auvergne geologically, after the naturalist Jean-Etienne Guettard had recognized the volcanic character of the region. Desmarest “made the additional find that the abundant prismatic basalts, whose configurations had long been considered indicative of an aqueous formation, were associated with the congealed lavas and must be volcanic as well” (Taylor 1994: 130). The collaboration with ingénieur-geographique François Pasumet and Dailley lasted longer than Desmarest had anticipated. The map set new standards for the interpretation of the terrain and precise graphic representation and positioning of different rocks. For leveling, Desmarest was able to use a newly manufactured graphometer with telescopic sights, made by Cavinet. Desmarest had a portable barometer for leveling (Taylor 1994: 133). Maps were developed as the most important “visual language” (Rudwick 1976) in geology, particularly as an aid in the process of fieldwork. In the eighteenth century, however, they still had no relation to the much richer verbal description of data that characterized the work of the most highly esteemed geological empiricists such as Horace Bénédict de Saussure, Simon Pallas, Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, and Belsazar de la Motte Hacquet (Taylor 1985). Demarest’s biographical development as a geologist was used to show how field research became increasingly important, determining the praxis of geologists in the eighteenth century. Travel played a decisive role in this. It was only in the nineteenth century that topographic maps became the point of departure into which the stratigraphers and geologists of the national surveys integrated the results of their fieldwork, but what role did observation play in this context?

3.5 Observation and Mapping: Fieldwork and Stratigraphy

There is arguably no better practice than observation as a precondition for gaining knowledge that is so obvious, fundamental, omnipresent, and at the same time so ambiguous. Every observation, of whatever kind, is a central component of active questioning. What is questioned depends on the geologist’s collective group which is always part of a “Denkstil” (Fleck 1935) determined by shared epistemic values. And questioning is directly linked to documentation. This includes the most varied forms of recording, the “little tools of knowledge” (Becker and Clark 2001), such as lists and labels as well as journals, notebooks, diaries, sketches, pictures, and instruments. Drawings became necessary as mimetic instruments to record observations. New ways of recording observations were constantly being discovered in geology as the most important component, and for this reason the productivity of observation is essential to fieldwork. Here we may follow Daston’s apt description: “As a practice, observation is an engine of discovery and a bulwark of evidence” (Daston and Lunbeck 2011: 7). Often, observation is not only the means, but also the end, and “a learned reflection as a distinct form for knowledge” (Daston and Lunbeck 2011: 12) with its own standards and conditions. In the protagonists’ self-representations, observing and collecting appear predominantly as inseparable characteristics of the practices used during fieldwork. Observation dominates perception, the activation of the senses, the selection of phenomena, and the orientation of questioning and assessment. The registering process during the observation procedure created and developed new terms of classification. In the early nineteenth century, stratigraphy emerged. Secord has emphasized that “for an understanding of the practical activity of geological classification we must follow them [the geologists who were mostly stratigraphers] from the rooms of the Society into the field” (Secord 1986: 25). In their baggage, British geologists carried the introductory books, the hammer, a notebook, and instruments such as the barometer and compass. In order to give themselves a preliminary overview of a district, they first had to find an ideal mountain or other elevation from which they could determine in advance either the parallel lines of the traverses for their sections or at right angles to the outcrops of the strata. With this initial assessment in mind, the next steps in the route were planned, following the dip and strike of the strata encountered. Secord has reconstructed this procedure in detail on the basis of De la Beche’s contemporary manual (1831, esp. 598–606), and for this reason we shall follow him:

The angle of dip, usually estimated by sight, measured the maximum inclination of tilted strata from the horizontal; the point of the compass towards which the rock beds inclined was known as the direction of dip. The strike of strata, always at right angles to the direction of dip, represented the line of intersection of the tilted plane of the strata with the horizontal. Along the line of this traverse the geologist also noted the lithological characters; thickness; and fossil content of each outcrops, The resulting traverse (also known as horizontal) sections united isolated exposures and observations into a connected slice of the succession, cutting across the countryside like a trench. Such sections were best exposed along stream beds and costal cliffs, two of favourite haunts of the Victorian geologist. In addition to these traverse sections, geologists very occasionally traced out an individual stratum along the entire length of its outcrop. Mapped in this way, a bed with distinctive lithology could serve as a marker horizon, with its appearance in the separate traverse sections allowing them to be coordinated into a general picture of regional geological structure. (Secord 1986: 25/26)

This practice became standard in the nineteenth century and perhaps not only in Britain but also in Switzerland, France, and the Austrian Monarchy, as well as in the non-European colonies.

Bourguet et al. have argued in general that there is a close relationship between mapping and observation. “Both depend on the ordering and co-ordering of places of performance and dialogue, of accounting and recounting” (Bourguet et al. 2002: 8). Whereas maps had previously been based on the exegesis of ancient geographical descriptions and travel accounts, from the seventeenth, and especially from the eighteenth century on, the replacement of narratives by instrumentally acquired data changed the role of the use of instruments, barometers to determine height, and compasses to determine direction. The prerequisite was that these instruments should be standardized and decoupled from the place of their original production, in order to be generally usable in field research anywhere (Richard 1996). Bouguet et al. understand these processes as “delocalizing or decontextualizing knowledge as a consequence of the relationship between instruments, travel and science” (Bourguet et al. 2002: 9).

Even though observation is a very difficult variable to determine, it is a crucial aspect of field research in the context of expeditions. This bridging function will be analyzed in more detail in the next section.

4 Places and Spaces

4.1 Extension of Space Via Expedition, Intension Via Fieldwork

Expeditions and field science are fundamentally connected to space and place (Ophir and Shapin 1991). It is about here and there, the contrast between the familiar and the unfamiliar, and, as Geikie put it, “home and abroad” (Geikie 1882). While expeditions seem to expand space, leading to the further spaces in the sense of expanding space, fieldwork goes deep into a place in the sense of deep concentration and observation of places.

At the end of the eighteenth century, some sites were not only discovered by locals and foreigners, but also held a special fascination for hybrid visitors, such as naturalists, mining officials, and travelers. Think of the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Antrim (now Northern Ireland) or the Campi Phlegraei in Italy (Rudwick 2005). A typical example is Auvergne, which attracted almost 80 naturalists, mining experts and geologists between 1751 and 1800, who visited the volcanoes and wrote about their experiences (Taylor 2007). There were many reasons to visit the site: to discover extinct volcanoes in the heart of France with one’s own eyes, to map the volcanic terrain, and to interpret the recognition of the association of columnar basalt with the products of volcanic action in geohistorical terms. The Auvergne became a “geological mecca”, “a fixed element of an international canon for the informed geologist” (Taylor 2007: 74). It was the most prominent place when geology was in the process of developing “a place-specificity” and a dazzling example of the argument that local experience, combined with unfamiliar features, had significance in developmental theories, if we consider the most prominent eighteenth-century controversies between neptunistic, vulcanistic, and plutonistic concepts (Fritscher 1990; Guntau 2009).

On many expeditions, however, the short duration of voyage meant that it was not possible to carry out this fieldwork in a way that adequately met the explorer’s high standards. This was the case with Bonaparte’s Egyptian Expedition (1798–1801), when the mineralogist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, frustrated by the obstacles that prevented him from properly carrying out his observations of the volcanoes and mountains he expected to find, withdrew his participation prematurely in 1799. This expedition was unprecedented, not only for the number of its participants (60, including 40 polytechnicians), but also for the 35,000 military men who took part. Previous academic expeditions around the world had only included individual scientists and artists, such as expeditions leaded by Bougainville, Cook, La Pérouse, and Malaspina. The Egyptian Expedition, however, had a dual purpose: a scientific and a military one (Herald 1992). Initially, an institute was moved to Cairo, and the particular field explorations around Cairo and in the south were closely linked to the army and its operations. All departments, including the military, were directed toward a common object: space, territory, and its material appropriation. At this point we might ask, “to what extent does science depend on the place where it is practised?” Bourguet, who has studied this expedition in great detail, gives the following explanation: “the framework of an unequal, asymmetric discourse emerges from the contrast that the French established between the science they practiced in Egypt and the science they knew in the metropolis. The former – and, science in general – practised outside Europe in colonized lands or countries recently opened to Western influence – was shaped by the obstacles which, from the exterior, hindered its progress. In other words, for the French scientists, the construction of knowledge in Egypt was a result of the social, cultural and material conditions of its production and it shared the limitation of the colonial context. Science in the metropolis was liberated from the bounds of its context” (Bourguet 2002: 100). The success of the expedition, however, was due in no small part to the rich collections of drawings, the measurements of monuments and landscapes, and the precise topographical descriptions made with compass and theodolite. For reliable distance measurements, they relied on the step of a camel – a “veritable animal pendulum” (Bourguet 2002: 105). Even more lasting was the monumental publication under the auspices of the government, in which the maps had to remain secret until 1818.

4.2 Expeditions Building on Previous Enterprises and Pointing to Future Ones

If one argues for the importance of an expedition in terms of its results, the 29 volumes of Alexander von Humboldt’s (Beck 1959–1961; Daum 2019) travels to the Americas, with its panorama of culture, nature, and politics, would probably rank first among many examples. It was very different from another narrative of Humboldt’s travels, based on his Russian-Siberian journey of 1829 and concentrating on climate, terrestrial magnetism, and geology. In contrast to the work on the Americas, there was a clear division of labor, with additional members of the expedition involved. Humboldt had given up his previous financial and political independence and, after 4 years of preparation, embarked on the expedition initiated by Nicholas I.

He was accompanied by the biologist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the mineralogist Gustav Rose, his own right-hand man Johann Seifert, the Russian mining official Dmitri Stepanovich [Stepanovič], Menschenin [Mern’šenin] a cook, two servants, and a courier. They traveled in four coaches, with 12,000 horses at their disposal. In the New World, Humboldt had covered some 8,000 km in 5 years, while in the Russian Empire the group traveled more than 18,000 km in 8 months (Suckow 2001: 253). What was important was the high speed, which placed an enormous burden on the field research. A clear manifestation of the density of the scientific work and the incredibly high speed of travel are the diaries, which even in their handwriting give clear evidence of the cramped and incomplete style of reporting (Kraft 2018: 64). While Humboldt initially showed little enthusiasm for the barren landscape, which he perceived as “unnatural”, he was all the more fascinated by the visits to the mines around Yekaterinburg.

It was only through the deliberate suppression of political and cultural phenomena in Humboldt’s Fragmens de géologie et de climatologie asiatiques [Fragments of Asian Geology and Climatology] (1831) that there was a focus on the analysis of the Asian mountain ranges and their geological origins and on the connection between the earth’s surface, temperature, and climate variation. Humboldt was extensively preoccupied with attempts to explain the special geological problem of various subsidences in the Caspian Sea. A quarter of the pages in this work were annotations that Humboldt owed to correspondents such as Alexander Kasimowitsch Kasem-Beck (Kazembek), Anton von Klostermann, Heinrich Lenz, François Désiré Roulin, and Julius Klaproth, all of whom knew the area well. It was not by chance that Humboldt had to defend himself against the criticism of the Berlin geographer Carl Ritter that he had written his books with the help of others. More important was his three-volume work on his trip to Russia, entitled Asie centrale. Recherches sur les chaines de montagnes et de la climatologie comparée (2 Vol. 1843), on which Humboldt had worked for more than 10 years. He used the time particularly to gather information from colleagues in the relevant fields. Humboldt considered the work to be so important for geological research “that it throws the entire ancient mountain geography of Asia into confusion”, as he wrote to his publisher Johann Georg Cotta in 1849 (Humboldt and Cotta 2009: 360).

Recent scholarship has also seen the importance of this work in the fact that his magnetic research has brought about a worldwide expansion of special observatories and further expeditions (Kraft 2018). Humboldt’s travels and travel writings are a particular example of how each expedition was not only a singular event but also a process: expeditions built on previous enterprises and observations of contemporary travelers, and pointed to future ventures. At the same time, each had its own rules, depending on circumstances.

Geographically, Humboldt did not enter new territories. His intensive preparation included reading all the reports of his predecessors, such as those of the “Great Nordic Expedition” or the Kamchatka Expedition (1733–1744) on behalf of the Russian state, as well as overland expeditions sent out by the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, especially under the direction of the natural scientist Simon Peter Pallas, and also Heinrich Julius Klaproth’s expeditions to the Caucasus and Georgia as far as the borders of China, as well as those of many other authors.

Humboldt considered Pallas to be a multi-talent, but his theses on the formation of mountains in Central Asia were “caught up in the hypotheses of a dogmatic and imaginative geology that was prevalent at that time” (Humboldt 1849, vol. I.: 93). Humboldt’s expedition is a striking example of the characteristic of every expedition that each built on previous ones and gave rise to new ones. However, this only worked if the expedition was documented, a phenomenon that will be analyzed in more detail in the next section.

4.3 Expeditions and Documentation in the Nineteenth Century

The reliability of documentation was a key factor for all expeditions, regardless of their differences. Few other circumnavigations have attracted as much attention to the question of the relationship between documentation and expedition as that of the MS Beagle (1831–1836) with Charles Darwin on board. On the one hand, this significance is due to the rich source of Darwin’s material that resulted from his complex modes of documentation. On the other hand, it can also be attributed to the work and painstaking research of the historian Sandra Herbert. Darwin saw himself as a geologist before becoming a biologist on the basis of his theory of selection (published in 1859). Darwin’s recording system during the expedition was multi-faceted: it consisted of field notebooks, of four specimen notebooks, the “geological notes proper, generally organized according to locality and running to 1383c pages, as opposed to 368 pages for the zoological notes” (Herbert 2005). The latter had to demonstrate his own system of recording: one page was always left blank, reserved for additional notes. The records were also interspersed with numbers referring to the specimen, and there were also synthetic essays that Darwin wrote toward the end of his journey, reflecting his observations. At the same time, the notebooks were by no means dedicated solely to his observations, but were also places where he formulated general questions and arguments. In addition, Darwin developed a second argument, entitled “reflecting reading my geological notes”, which emphasized the attitude of reflection in a particular way. He thus juxtaposed observation and reflection.

Larger frameworks were dominant, less determined by a particular site. This ensured a step-by-step approach, which can also be seen as an intermediate step toward a later publication.

Darwin was inspired by Humboldt, from whom he not only adopted the “habit of viewing the Globe as great whole” (Herbert 2005: 15) but also the ideal of simplicity and its style. According to Herbert, Darwin belonged, “as writer of his travel narrative to the past”, but as a geologist, theoretically combining his considerations, he pointed to the future. For Darwin did not work within the paradigm of stratigraphy, but was guided by the search for a geology determined by other components: “namely, understanding the vertical motions of earth’s crust, elevation and subsidence”: “Part of Darwin’s scheme for a simple geology has survived close to the form in which he imagined it: his theory of structure and distribution of coral reefs, which emphasized the role of subsidence in the creation of coral islands, most strikingly atolls. Coral Reefs held a special place in Darwin’s estimation, and, alone of three parts of his geological trilogy from the voyage, he rewrote it substantially when it appeared as second edition in 1874” (Herbert 2005: 356). The records of the expeditions were not only the starting point for Darwin’s multiple revisions for publication but remained a principle throughout the nineteenth century.

4.4 Empirical Versus Speculative, Observation (Field Science) Versus Geological Theory, Local Knowledge Versus Universal Knowledge

To better understand knowledge production and acquisition in geology, we need to explore the interplay between practices (fieldwork) and scientific discourses (theory). The misleading historical notion, and common narrative today, that observation and system (theory) were antithetical in the eighteenth century goes back to Charles Lyell’s historical introduction in his Principles of Geology (1837). Of the well-known empirical geologist Theodore-Benedict Saussure, Lyell wrote that he “employed the chief portion of his time in studying the structure of the Alps and Jura, and he provided valuable data for those who followed him. He did not pretend to deduce any general system from his numerous and interesting observations; and the few theoretical opinions which escaped from him, seem, like those of Pallas, to have been chiefly derived from the cosmological speculations of preceding writers” (Lyell 1838, Vol 1: 80). On the one hand, traditional cosmological theory was seen as an obstacle to all progress, while observation seemed to pave the way for generalization only slowly. The division between two ways of doing geology, the empirical and the speculative, was also emphasized by Karl Alfred Zittel in his influential History of Geology and Palaeontology in 1898 (Tamborini 2015a, b). Under the headings “Hypothesis of the Earth’s Origin and History, and Beginning of Geological Observation” Zittel argued that “the keen interest in minerals and fossils and the flourishing condition of the mining industry gradually attracted the attention of scientific men to the investigation of the earth itself. Two methods of research, the empirical and the speculative, developed alongside one another. The one had for its immediate aim the determination of facts, and in its further outlook, the possible construction of some suitable theory; the other contented itself with a minimum of observation, accepted the rinks of error, and set about explaining the past and the present from the subjective standpoint. The latter method naturally attained no higher results than the geogenetic fantasies of classical antiquity. And it certainly could never have gathered sufficient energy to roll aside the mass of philosophical and doctrinal tradition and blocked the path of progress” (Zittel 1901: 23).

For a long time, the history of the development of geology was also understood as a simple displacement of the theory of the Earth by field geology. Frank Dawson Adams (1938) spoke of fables, of which he mentioned Buffon’s Theory and Epoques as the best example: “the close of this long period of imaginative effort” (Adams 1938; Taylor 1992). The polar opposition between speculative theory of little value and good empirical work by naturalists such as Simon Pallas, Horace B. de Saussure, Dolomieu, and Mitchel was also taken for granted by Gillispie: “The science of geology represents a coming together of lore from the ancient practice of mineralogy with speculation about the origin of the earth, seventeenth and eighteenth century cosmogonies which have in them more of science fiction than of science” (Gillispie 1960: 291–291).

It was necessary for historians of geology to paint a picture of a more complicated and ambiguous relationship between theory and factual knowledge, rather than a black and white narrative. Rachel Laudan has rejected such a simple contrast between “speculators” and “empiricists”: “All the geologists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expected theory or ‘system’ to play a role in geology. And they all demanded that theory should be warranted by evidence. The point at issue was not whether to opt for theory or for fact gathering. Rather, it was relationship between theory and facts” (Laudan 1987: 8). In contrast to the old dichotomy, Kenneth Taylor has argued that the old tradition of cosmology was an integral part of the making of the new geology in the second half of the century. Based on close readings of Desmarest’s sources, Taylor has demonstrated that Nicolas Desmarest’s observational preoccupations were derived from theories of the Earth written by scholars such as Louis Bourguet, Nicolas Antonie Boulanger, and Georges Louis Buffon. They emphasized natural “regularities” in what they often referred to as “dispositional” regularities in the configuration of geological features. The marginalization of the extraordinary and irregular in observation was shared by many scholars. Jean-Louis Giraud Soulavie, for example, wrote in his Natural History of Southern France that the naturalist must follow nature in the most general and widest operations. In Desmarest’s case, this meant that he had already “settled on a clear position about how observations must be treated: their significance depended upon their integration into a framework of generalization – observations must be used to find general relations, which in turn offer some prospect of yielding explanatory principles” (Taylor 2001).

In the nineteenth century, field geologists were still in the majority, given the large number of surveys responsible for mapping of national territories. The work of Rudwick, Oldroyd, and Secord valued mapping as both a theoretical and an observational activity. Le Grand has suggested that field geologists, working in specific geographical regions on which they focused their research, were particularly attached to a kind of “localism” (Grand 1986). This was often framed nationally or according to a “thought collective” (Fleck 1935). Questioning Le Grand’s term, Oreskes suggested that it would be better to speak of “epistemological affinity” – meaning that “geologists would weigh the available observations differently, based on their affinities” (Oreskes 53).

Naomi Oreskes, who has studied in depth the decades-long rejection in the United States of the continental drift theory proposed by Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) in 1912, considered field research as one factor among many. She has identified three research traditions: field mapping, geodetic surveying, and atomic physics. Uniformitarianism had a chance in the debate because Wegener allowed the field evidence to be interpreted logically (Oreskes 1999: 314). As field research lost some of its authority during the twentieth century, so did the specific theories attached to it.

However, many geologists continued to work in the field because of the authenticity it provided, while in the twentieth century at the latest, the decline of fieldwork was heralded by laboratory geologists. As the precision and accuracy of laboratory research was now sufficient for orientation, the value shifted more toward laboratory research. New instruments, which, according to Galison, produced new data in physics were far less decisive in geology: “They rejected well-established evidence-based traditions in favour of a new tradition whose reliability could have been considered as suspect as the theory it was used it to support” (Oreskes 1999: 311).

Field research, previously the unquestioned backbone of geology, had lost its dominance. But what remained was the habitus, the clothing. Even geologists who worked purely theoretically and stayed away from the field adapted the clothing that had been introduced to the habitus of field geologists. The difference to physicists can still be seen today at world congresses of geology.

5 Conclusion

In order to analyze expeditions and situate their specific meaning within the framework of earth sciences, this article has first proposed to start from an expanded concept of expedition, in contrast to earlier approaches, and to avoid a dualistic view of exploration and science. While adventure had long been associated exclusively with exploration, this study does not exclude it per se. At best, it had no place in contemporaries’ “epistemic virtues”, although adventure was of course part of every voyage.

By broadening the concept of expedition, this paper has discussed traveling and fieldwork practices associated with the establishment of geology as a discipline. It has also taken into account the ambiguity of the expedition phenomenon, an undertaking involving from a single individual up to several thousand people. It is therefore possible to build a new and more consistent historiographical bridge between fieldwork and expedition. The reference to Daston’s “epistemic virtues” and Fleck’s “thought collective” provides further methodological arguments in favor of a broader concept of expedition and thus for a new emphasis on the heterogeneity of the expedition phenomenon.

For expeditions represented a space of negotiation in which both different “epistemic virtues” and group pressure, in the sense of Fleck’s “thought collective”, played a crucial role in the preparations prior to departure and during the processing of findings. The article has also suggested that rather than making a general and idealized distinction between fieldwork and the laboratory, it is more fruitful to follow Bruno Latour and see the two as interrelated or complementary. Stratigraphic research in the earth sciences, for example, is a prime example of how intensive preparation preceded and followed the actual work in the field.

The value placed on travel and the development of fieldwork is shown by the emergence of travel guides. They are indicative of the specific profile of the earth sciences from the mid-eighteenth century. It is no coincidence that the geologist’s hammer was declared the most important tool, distinguishing it from the traditional miner’s hammer. It takes us back to the period between 1750 and 1840, when geology was established as an independent science.

There is no question that field research must be regarded as a major preoccupation in the practice of geologists. The process of establishing geology took place at the same time as it was being promoted in instruction books. With its acceptance as an integral part of journeys and expeditions, field research gained recognition and became the axiomatic essence of geology. But how did fieldwork become integrated into the traditional habits of the study room over the course of the eighteenth century? This process happened gradually, as has been shown using the example of one geologist’s biography. The starting point for most geologists was self-study by reading books. The transition from the study room to the field took place in the context of mineralogical collecting activities. This was followed by a period of fieldwork with like-minded people. Finally, as a bridge between the study room and the field, mapping became a central goal of the geologist.

The close relationship between mapping and documentation can be seen as specific to geology. Both are involved in a mutual process of fixation and reference. The use of measuring instruments led to a close relationship between travel and research. Its importance is demonstrated by the combination of the significance of observation, documentation during a journey, and relevance to the formation of knowledge, always in close interaction with theoretical concepts. Journeys and expeditions, in turn, led to an expansion of territorial knowledge, initially focusing on Europe, then on the colonial world and beyond. Field research, however, centered more intensively on a particular site. Large-scale expeditions, such as Napoleon’s in Egypt, could also pose problems characteristic of the tension between expedition, movement within a particular territory and field research on site. No other field of knowledge has such a clear symbol of its professional basis as geology, which gave fieldwork a high status by means of the geologist’s hammer and which, by no means coincidentally, still uses the geologist’s hammer as a batch and symbol today, despite its loss of importance. And yet there is another specificity in the earth sciences. This is the close dependence on places and spaces, which has been referred to as “place specificity” of the earth sciences.

One site could become so famous that it was visited as a “geological mecca” by every geologist who could travel there. Expeditions also evoked successor enterprises. In any case, they had to be well documented, like those famous ones of Humboldt and Darwin. The practice of documentation consisted of various forms of recording, which fascinated both later expeditioners and the historians of science who have increasingly studied these practices in recent decades.

The relationship between empiricism and speculation, between fieldwork and theory, has long been understood as antithetical. In contrast, this paper has argued that it is important not to choose one over the other, but discuss the relationship between them. Mapping, for example, has been assessed by historians such as Secord and Rudwick as both a theoretical and an observational activity. Geologists assessed observation according to their affinities and different scientific traditions or thought collectives. In the rejection of Wegener’s drift theory, fieldwork and observation were only one factor among many. In the twentieth century, however, fieldwork lost its status and the theories associated with it.