Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: Observation Observed 1
4. Part One. Framing the History of Scientific Observation, 500–1800
5. Introduction 11
6. 1. Observation in the Margins, 500–1500 15
7. 2. Observation Rising: Birth of an Epistemic Genre, 1500–1650 45
8. 3. The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800 81
9. Part Two. Observing and Believing: Evidence
10. Introduction 115
11. 4. The Color of Blood: Between Sensory Experience and Epistemic Significance 117
12. 5. Seeing Is Believing: Professor Vagner’s Wonderful World 135
13. 6. A Visual History of Jean Perrin’s Brownian Motion Curves 156
14. Part Three. Observing in New Ways: Techniques
15. Introduction 181
16. 7. Frogs on the Mantelpiece: The Practice of Observation in Daily Life 185
17. 8. Sorting Things Out: The Economist as an Armchair Observer 206
18. 9. “A Number of Scenes in a Badly Cut Film”: Observation in the Age of Strobe 230
19. 10. Empathy as a Psychoanalytic Mode of Observation: Between Sentiment and Science 255
20. Part Four. Observing New Things: Objects
21. Introduction 277
22. 11. Reforming Vision: The Engineer Le Play Learns to Observe Society Sagely 281
23. 12. Seeking Parts, Looking for Wholes 303
24. 13. Seeing the Blush: Feeling Emotions 326
25. 14. Visualizing Radiation: The Photographs of Henri Becquerel 349
26. Part Five. Observing Together: Communities
27. Introduction 369
28. 15. The Geography of Observation: Distance and Visibility in Eighteenth-Century Botanical Travel 373
29. 16. The World on a Page: Making a General Observation in the Eighteenth Century 396
30. 17. Coming to Attention: A Commonwealth of Observers during the Napoleonic Wars 421
31. Contributors 445
32. Index 449