David N Livingstone
Biographic Data
| ID | 125612 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David N Livingstone |
| GIVEN NAMES | David N |
| FAMILY NAME | Livingstone |
| SIGNATURE | LIVINGSTONE D N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University Belfast |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 698 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Empire of climate
The collective comments of the reviews by Sophie Adams, Georgina Endfield, Nina Laurie and Heather Winlow raise a sequence of challenges that I faced in writing The Empire of Climate. Their observations have prompted me to revisit a number of matters congregating around the role of presentism in climate writing, the uses of intellectual history, and the relationship between the history of climatic ideas and future climate change. I also take the …
David Livingstone’s The Empire of Climate
The Empire of Climate
How the specter of climate has been used to explain history since antiquity Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate traces the history of this idea and its perv…
Empire of Climate
The Cambridge History of Science
This volume in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to exploring the history of modern science using national, transnational, and global frames of reference. Organized by topic and culture, its essays by distinguished scholars offer the most comprehensive and up-to-date nondisciplinary history of modern science currently available. Essays are grouped together in separate sections that represent larger regions: Europ…
Cambridge History of Science
The Geographical Tradition and the challenges of geography geographised
After briefly reflecting on the birth of The Geographical Tradition , I focus on several key issues that snake their way through the observations of my commentators. These include presentism in historiography, the political positioning of the historian, and the role of disciplinary location in the production of subject history. I then reflect on the promises and perils of “big history” before moving to some thoughts on the complex interplay betwe…
Genealogies of Environmentalism
Debating Darwin at the Cape
Jessica Howell, Exploring Victorian Travel Literature
In its capacity to colonise the deepest recesses of the human mind, climate must surely constitute one of the world's most successful imperial projects. Whether determining wealth, war, or well-being, climate has long been called upon to do serious explanatory work. Not surprisingly it captured the imaginations of Victorian travel writers as they resorted to its imperatives in their narratives of their own or others' experiences in the tropical w…
Finding revelation in anthropology
Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not least is this so in the sphere of religion, where anthropological accounts have often been taken to represent the triumph of naturalism. This metanarrative, however, fails to recognize that naturalistic explanations could sometimes be espoused for religious purposes and in defence of confessional creeds. This essay examines two late nineteenth-century f…
Dealing with Darwin
How was Darwin’s work discussed and debated among the same religious denomination in different locations?Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the…
Studies of Skin Color in the Early Royal Society
Changing Climate, Human Evolution, and the Revival of Environmental Determinism
The role of climatic change in determining the shape of human evolution, a theme that came to prominence during the early years of the twentieth century, has resurfaced with renewed vigor. The author examines the rise and resurgence of the modern history of the idea that hominid evolutionary pathways have been trigged by climatic causes to illustrate the continuing vitality of environmental determinism and to highlight some continuities between e…
The Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge
Adam's Ancestors
Geographies of science
This collection of essays aims to further the understanding of historical and contemporary geographies of science. It offers a fresh perspective on comparative approaches to scientific knowledge and practice as pursued by geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians of science
Cultural politics and the racial cartographics of human origins
Discussions about human origins, both scientific and pre-scientific, have frequently been freighted with the cultural politics of race relations and questions about human equality. In one way or another, maps have played a critical role in these enterprises by presenting in visual form narratives of human genesis and patterns of human ancestral lineages. In this paper I discuss how a sequence of cartographic representations of human beginnings ha…
Johnston, R.J. 1979
Science, site and speech
An awareness of the significance of location in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge has brought a new dimension to recent work on the sociology of science. But the importance of speech in scientific enterprises has been less well developed. This article explores the idea of `spaces of speech' by underscoring the connections between location and locution. It develops a case study of how Darwinian evolution was talked about in …
Putting progress in its place
The idea of progress disconcerts. While it is enshrined as an object in our research audit culture, its very existence is queried in many groves of the modern academy. Here I contend that the idea of ‘progress in geography’ has meant different things, at different times, in different places, and that it has been put to different cultural and political uses. The realization that ‘progress in geography’has its own geography might lead us in the dir…
The geography of Darwinism
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Science, text and space
The idea of a ‘geography of reading’ provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements – Gadamer's ‘fusion of horizons’, Said's ‘travelling theory’, Secord's ‘geographies of reading’, Beer's ‘miscegenation of texts’, Fish's ‘interpretive communities’ and Rupke's ‘geogr…
Text, talk and testimony
A surge of spatial imagery is sweeping across wide stretches of the academy. Spheres of scholarly endeavour hitherto seemingly immune to matters of space and place have been exploiting the geographical lexicon and appending to it ever more imaginative adjectives. Thus literary critics, cultural historians, psychologists, poets and many others have been uncovering geographies that are variously depicted as 'tender', 'neural', 'fabulous', 'romantic…
Public spectacle and scientific theory
The Spaces of Knowledge
In recent times there has been a remarkable spatial turn within a variety of academic discourses. Historians, social theorists, anthropologists, and philosophers have all redrawn attention to the constitutive significance of place and space, site and situation, locality and territoriality. After briefly sketching some of the major features of this 'geographical recovery', I examine some of its implications for the study of the scientific enterpri…
The geographical tradition
Science, text and space
The idea of a ‘geography of reading’ provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements – Gadamer's ‘fusion of horizons’, Said's ‘travelling theory’, Secord's ‘geographies of reading’, Beer's ‘miscegenation of texts’, Fish's ‘interpretive communities’ and Rupke's ‘geogr…
The moral discourse of climate
Race, space and moral climatology
Adam's Ancestors
Text, talk and testimony
A surge of spatial imagery is sweeping across wide stretches of the academy. Spheres of scholarly endeavour hitherto seemingly immune to matters of space and place have been exploiting the geographical lexicon and appending to it ever more imaginative adjectives. Thus literary critics, cultural historians, psychologists, poets and many others have been uncovering geographies that are variously depicted as 'tender', 'neural', 'fabulous', 'romantic…
Science, site and speech
An awareness of the significance of location in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge has brought a new dimension to recent work on the sociology of science. But the importance of speech in scientific enterprises has been less well developed. This article explores the idea of `spaces of speech' by underscoring the connections between location and locution. It develops a case study of how Darwinian evolution was talked about in …
Meaning Through Metaphor
The role of imagination in geographical philosophy and theory is demonstrated by an examination of the function of analogical thinking in scientific investigation. Specifically, the interrelationships between metaphorical usage and mythic understanding and the development of models is elucidated through an analysis of the metaphor-myth-model nexus. The contribution of organicistic models of society to geographical investigation is shown to rely u…
Changing Climate, Human Evolution, and the Revival of Environmental Determinism
The role of climatic change in determining the shape of human evolution, a theme that came to prominence during the early years of the twentieth century, has resurfaced with renewed vigor. The author examines the rise and resurgence of the modern history of the idea that hominid evolutionary pathways have been trigged by climatic causes to illustrate the continuing vitality of environmental determinism and to highlight some continuities between e…
Tropical climate and moral hygiene
On Wednesday 27 April 1898, Dr Luigi [Louis] Westenra Sambon (1865–1931) addressed the Royal Geographical Society in London on a topic of much interest to the Victorian public. An Anglo-French medical graduate of the University of Naples, a Fellow of the London Zoological Society and a recent visitor to Central Africa, he was well equipped to tackle the subject of the ‘Acclimatization of Europeans in Tropical Lands’. The ‘problem of tropical colo…
The History of Science and the History of Geography
Cultural politics and the racial cartographics of human origins
Discussions about human origins, both scientific and pre-scientific, have frequently been freighted with the cultural politics of race relations and questions about human equality. In one way or another, maps have played a critical role in these enterprises by presenting in visual form narratives of human genesis and patterns of human ancestral lineages. In this paper I discuss how a sequence of cartographic representations of human beginnings ha…
Human Acclimatization
Science and Society
During the final quarter of the nineteenth century Nathaniel S. Shaler, forefather of American geography and Dean of Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, devoted much time and effort to analysing what he understood to be America's race problem. His 'scientific' treatment of the theme starkly reveals the ease with which contemporary scholarship could be manipulated to foster a racist mentality. Shaler's fusion of current biological, anthropologic…
Geographical Traditions
Geography, Tradition and the Scientific Revolution
This essay examines the relationship geography sustained with traditional sources of knowledge during the period of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even while confirming traditional beliefs derived from magic and astrology, geography challenged traditional dogma by its anti-authoritarian emphasis on experience. In due course geography came to adopt and to advance the new epistemological tradition of the nasce…
Tropical Hermeneutics
Science and religion
Putting progress in its place
The idea of progress disconcerts. While it is enshrined as an object in our research audit culture, its very existence is queried in many groves of the modern academy. Here I contend that the idea of ‘progress in geography’ has meant different things, at different times, in different places, and that it has been put to different cultural and political uses. The realization that ‘progress in geography’has its own geography might lead us in the dir…
Darwinism and Calvinism
The Geographical Tradition and the challenges of geography geographised
After briefly reflecting on the birth of The Geographical Tradition , I focus on several key issues that snake their way through the observations of my commentators. These include presentism in historiography, the political positioning of the historian, and the role of disciplinary location in the production of subject history. I then reflect on the promises and perils of “big history” before moving to some thoughts on the complex interplay betwe…
Reproduction, Representation and Authenticity
This essay argues for the moral necessity of retaining connections between the practices of representation and the ideal of authenticity. Using the example of racial representation, the author finds in the political philosophy of Charles Taylor and the cultural criticism of George Steiner resources for engaging in a creative dialogue with the history of our own tradition
The Behavioural Environment
Evolution, science and society
Meaning Through Metaphor
The role of imagination in geographical philosophy and theory is demonstrated by an examination of the function of analogical thinking in scientific investigation. Specifically, the interrelationships between metaphorical usage and mythic understanding and the development of models is elucidated through an analysis of the metaphor-myth-model nexus. The contribution of organicistic models of society to geographical investigation is shown to rely u…
Environmental theology
Natural Theology and Neo-Lamarckism
During the first half of the nineteenth century, natural theology provided a common integrative context for research in natural history in general and geography in particular. With the anti-teleological challenge of the Darwinian revolution, however, natural theology became progressively fragmented, Providence increasingly identified with the uniformity of nature, and the process of social legitimation transferred to the new laws of nature. The w…
The Frontier in the City
The ethnonational differentiation that characterizes life in Northern Ireland, dating from the seventeenth-century Plantation, is manifest in the high degree of residential segregation and recurrent violence in the Belfast urban area. In turn, this urban encapsulation of the ethnonational conflict exists in microcosm in the Shankill-Falls area of west Belfast. In our examination of how Protestant and Roman Catholic residents in this small area ha…
Science and Society
During the final quarter of the nineteenth century Nathaniel S. Shaler, forefather of American geography and Dean of Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, devoted much time and effort to analysing what he understood to be America's race problem. His 'scientific' treatment of the theme starkly reveals the ease with which contemporary scholarship could be manipulated to foster a racist mentality. Shaler's fusion of current biological, anthropologic…
The History of Science and the History of Geography
Evolution, science and society
Human Acclimatization
Science, Magic and Religion
Geography, Tradition and the Scientific Revolution
This essay examines the relationship geography sustained with traditional sources of knowledge during the period of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even while confirming traditional beliefs derived from magic and astrology, geography challenged traditional dogma by its anti-authoritarian emphasis on experience. In due course geography came to adopt and to advance the new epistemological tradition of the nasce…
The inventions of history
Does Geography Have a Nature? The Dilemmas of a Definition
(1991). Does Geography Have a Nature? The Dilemmas of a Definition. Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 81, No. 2, pp. 334-337
The moral discourse of climate
The Behavioural Environment
Of Design and Dining Clubs
The Preadamite Theory and the Marriage of Science and Religion
Darwinism and Calvinism
The geographical tradition
Classics in human geography revisited
Of Evolution and Revolution
Science and religion
The Evolution Controversy in America
For well over a century, the United States has witnessed a prolonged debate over organic evolution and teaching of the theory in the nation's public schools. The controversy that began with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species had by the 1920's expanded to include theologians, politicians, and educators. The Scopes trial of 1925 provided the growing antievolution movement with significant publicity and led to a decline in the teaching of…
The History of Cartography. Volume 2, Book 2
Geographical Traditions
The Polity of Nature
History (28 works) · Philosophy (28 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Political science (24 works) · Epistemology (21 works) · History (20 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Geography (19 works) · Law (19 works) · History of Science and Natural History (16 works)