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QUESTION FOR FEBRUARY: How does an understanding of historiographical issues in Pacific Studies help us to understand science in the Pacific region?

Sources for February illustrations: Clockwise from top left:
1. Photograph of the Hokule’a, the voyaging canoe of the Polynesian Voyaging Society
2. Image of Captain Cook by New Zealand artist Nigel Brown
3. Drawing of tattooed man, Tainai, haka’iki of Vaitahu, in Greg Dening, Beach Crossings: Voyaging across times, cultures and self, (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2004), p. 207
4. Photograph of sugarcane on Kau’ai, Hawaiian Islands, 2007, by Lou Ratte
Sketch by Tupaia, Captain Cook’s Tahitian navigator, of British botanist Joseph Banks, in Anne Salmond, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 126

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QUESTION FOR JANUARY: If so many people contributed to the production of scientific knowledge why did so few voices become authoritative?

Sources for January illustrations: Clockwise from top left:

Cameroonian bird
Anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski in the field
Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant with birds of paradise
Wallace’s book on The Malay Archipelago
Image celebrating the founding of the Royal Society in London
From Maria Sibylla Merian’s book, Metamorphosibus Insectorum Surinamensium (1726)

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QUESTION FOR DECEMBER: If Portuguese and Spanish contributions to the history of science are so important, why do we know so little about them?

Sources for illustrations: Clockwise from top:

• A Still Life of Peaches, Fish, Chestnuts, a Tin Plate and Sweet Box and Two Mexican Lacquer Cups, by Antonio Ponce, ca. 1630. Marcy Norton points out that the items in the upper left are for frothing chocolate.
• Codex Tudela, Aztec, 16th century: Aztec woman frothing chocolate.
• Portrait of Nicolas Monardes, from his book Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, 1580.
• Vanilla plant from Codex Badianus, Aztec, 1552.
• Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage by Johannes Stradanus, 1605.

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QUESTION FOR NOVEMBER: What do Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan mean when they say that botany was “big science” in the 19th century?

Sources for illustrations: Clockwise from top left: (postcard of Calcutta Botanical Garden, 1909) (Indian scientist J.C. Bose in his laboratory, early 20th c.) (Botanical drawing from Calcutta Botanical Garden, 19th c.) (Ronald Ross, British scientist working on the cause of malaria in India, late 19th c.) (Indian nuclear bomb first detonated 1974)

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QUESTION FOR OCTOBER: With readings suggested by Benjamin Elman and Fa-ti Fan in mind, what connections can you make between the exact sciences and the natural sciences in China in the period from 1550 to 1900?

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QUESTION FOR SEPTEMBER: What thread in the history of science ties these three people together?

	Ptolemy Greek c. 90-c.168 C.E. Author of Almagest And Geography
	Nasir-al din al-Tusi Persian 1201- 1274 Formulator of the Tusi Couple
	Copernicus Polish 1473-1543 Author of On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies