The Science of Shallow Waters

Connecting and Classifying the Early Modern Atlantic

Bibliographic Data

ID4173571
AuthorsChristopher L Pastore (Albany State University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume112
Issue1
Pages122-129
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/713566
OpenAlexW3143815570
LanguageEN
References cited14

Histories of ocean science have emphasized the ways that state-sponsored deep-sea expeditions ushered in a new age of oceanic understanding during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This essay, on the other hand, examines the ways that shallow waters played host to less formal but nevertheless important efforts to create oceanic natural knowledge, often centuries earlier. By documenting the legends and experiences of people who worked on and lived by the ocean?divers, sailors, and fishermen, among others?and corroborating their stories with firsthand observation, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century natural historians built a nascent science of the sea. In its close focus on ?sea beans? and ?barnacle geese,? subjects of wide conjecture and earnest curiosity, the essay shows how shallow waters welcomed new actors onto the scientific stage and decentered the geographies of knowledge production, thereby advancing contemporary knowledge of oceanic circulation as well as the taxonomies and ecologies of coastal creatures

Archaeology · Creatures · Curiosity · Natural (archaeology · Geology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · History of Science and Natural History · Oceanography

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