Zemstvos and naturalists: objectives of applied research, methods of fundamental science

• Autores: Anastasia A. Fedotova
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 612-615
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In their recent works, historians of Russian science emphasise that many projects which were carried out in the field of natural history in the European Russia in the late 19th century, with funding provided by local elected authorities (the zemstvos), could be defined as applied research only in terms of their objectives, but not their methods and results. For example, Vasilii V. Dokuchaev’s expeditions to Nizhnii Novgorod and Poltava provinces were very important for genetic soil science; however, they failed to achieve their explicit practical goal of cadastral surveying. In my paper I attempt to analyse some reasons accounting for this tendency.

    In the 19th century many Russian naturalists and agronomists sought to prove that the study of local nature was essential for the advancement of agriculture. In my view, their views were a reaction not only to a primitive state of agricultural production in the country but also to the failures in a ‘blind’ transfer of Western European practices. European education in agrology, as well as European literature in that field proved to be insufficient for transforming rural economy into successful agricultural enterprise. At the same time the tsarist government still refused to acknowledge that agriculture required specialised knowledge. When in the last two decades of the 19th century scientists began to study local natural environments, they were very excited about these projects, as they were convinced that the study of natural history was the first step towards rationalising agricultural production in Russia, while they never questioned their own research design: they did not consider the need to change their methods and research objectives. Many of these projects pursued applied objectives but employed methods borrowed from fundamental science. Therefore their results contributed primarily to the advancement of fundamental science. Thus in the late 19th century we observe a conspicuous gap between primitive methods of agricultural production and advanced state of research that was hardly relevant for everyday agricultural management.