Historians have investigated for some time the nature and practice of colonial science. Some have seen it in terms of the spread of European influence and knowledge in an age of imperialism, others have studied it in particular local contexts. These studies identi& an emphasis on practical science and natural history, and a degree of dependence on experts resident at the European centre. More recent work thaws attention to the exchange of information that occurred between various sites on the periphery. In this thesis I investigate the nature and practice of science in Brisbane in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Brisbane was a small, isolated town, an administrative centre in a colony dominated by its pastoral industry. The govermnent, partly because of regular budgetary crises and partly because it could not perceive any public benefit, was not interested in funding science. The two scientific institutions - the Philosophical Society, which became the Royal Society in 1883, and the Acclimatisation Society - are studied in order to demonstrate the ways in which men with scientific interests organised themselves and attempted to influence the scientific agenda. I go on to trace the relationships and communication networks of the two men who are arguably the pre-eminent figures in nineteenth-century Queensland science, F. M. Bailey and Joseph Bancroft, in an attempt to determine what effect geographic and intellectual isolation, and lack of funding, had on their activities. Several themes emerge. First, although there was an emphasis as elsewhere on practical science and natural history, for some middle class men science was a social and cultural pursuit. These men, in seeking to re-create the institutions that they had left behind them in Britain, established social and political networks that helped to establish them in a new society. The continual inflow of new immigrants guaranteed an inflow of scientific culture and new technology. Second, acclimatisation and economic botany provided a focus for practical scientific activities. Through the leadership of Lewis Bernays, a public servant with no scientific background or training, acclimatisation became a respectable activity in which people from all over the colony participated. Acclimatisation represented the interface between science, technology and economic progress. Third, other men such as F. M. Bailey, the colonial botanist, and Dr Joseph Bancroft, who had many scientific interests, were intent on both expanding the body of knowledge and making use of what they considered useful knowledge for the benefit of the colony. A simple diffusion model does not explain adequately the complex conditions under which western science was pursued and established in a remote settler society such as Queensland.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/194970 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Clements, Helen Gail, n/a |
| Publisher | Griffith University. School of Humanities |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.gu.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Helen Gail Clements |
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