Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 (review)

Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820. By Vladimir Jankovib (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001) 272 pp. $55.00 cloth $20.00 paper

Jankovib's Reading the Skies traces the development of meteorology from the reporting of such unusual individual events as meteors, fireballs, earthquakes, and northern lights to systematic study of weather patterns, climate, and seasonal changes. Furthermore, it looks at the epistemological underpinnings behind these changes, arguing that changes in the definition and content of meteorology reflect not only the changing nature of scientific inquiry in the eighteenth century, but also the changing priorities of English society vis-à-vis the countryside and the city. Jankovib argues that meteorological reporting was a facet of natural history, and, as such, "constituted an aspect of English geographical thinking during a period concerned with the creation and sustenance of national, regional, and parochial identities with respect to the moral topography of the land" (5). Consequently, a number of competing, and sometimes contradictory ideas about meteorology operated simultaneously.

Jankovib uses a blend of methodologies derived from both the history of science and literary criticism to study this subject. By blending these different approaches, he can address the development of ideas about the world, changes in the practices of gathering and recording empirical information, the rhetoric of these descriptions, and the social and intellectual backgrounds of those people (largely men) who made observations and collected data.

Jankovib sees developments in meteorology as embedded in tensions between provincial and cosmopolitan English society. Eighteen-century urban intellectuals assumed the existence of a provincial intellectual and cultural void. However, Jankovib argues that setting and region were integral to meteorological observations. Because meteorological reporting was a quest for regional identity, it was largely a provincial activity—an extension of the meaning that property and place had for the gentry. The observers and reporters of individual meteorological events derived their scientific legitimacy from their parochial and local associations, which gave them access to local knowledge and local flora and fauna.

The search for laws governing weather and the triumph of the systematic gathering of data about weather was more than simply the adoption of modern scientific processes. It required a re-definition of what constituted weather or meteorology. This reorientation meant that unique local meteorological events were no longer of great significance; nor were specific locales. Systematic data collection, along with studies conducted within the laboratory, changed both the content and the meaning behind meteorological observations. As a new species of science, meteorology became focused on data that could be standardized, quantified, and synchronized, replacing the earlier interest in the specific, the odd, and the local. Local occasional observations were eventually deemed inconclusive and unsystematic; meteorology no longer consisted of, or relied on, local knowledge.

Jankovib relies on a variety of sources for his study. He looks first at the influence of classical works, particularly Aristotle, on seventeenth and eighteenth-century writings about weather and meteorological phenomena. In addition to treatises on these subjects, Jankovib also spends a great deal of time analyzing the development and content of natural- history societies and their publications. The correspondence, diaries, and reports of provincial clergy about unusual events allows Jankovib not only to trace the social and intellectual connections among meteorological spectators and reporters but also to show how place and politics became embedded in this study. Finally, folklore sources gave Jankovib access to the tradition of the local farmer or the shepherd as knowledgeable about the weather. His wide-ranging sources expose different, and sometimes competing, discourses. The result is a fascinating study that should be of interest to a variety of scholars—those interested in the history of science, to be sure, as well as those interested in British cultural history and the tensions between provincial and cosmopolitan Britain.