In recent years, scholars interested in the entangled histories of the human and natural sciences have become increasingly involved in historicizing observation as a scientific practice and an epistemic category. Their efforts have been inspired by what is often referred to as the “practical turn” in the history of science, a shift in focus that has involved making issues of movement, work, materiality, and placemaking central to understanding the origins of the modern sciences and their relationships to one another. Several studies, such as this book by Julia Carina Böttcher, have been energized by the contributions of the historian of science Lorraine Daston, who laid the foundation for the focus of Böttcher's study in much of her own work on the topic, for example in a co-edited volume (with Elizabeth Lunbeck) on the Histories of Scientific Observation that appeared in 2011. Böttcher structures her study in such a way so as to build on foundational work by Daston and others on the histories of scientific observation. Yet she also adopts her own approach, placing a new history of epistemic practices and categories in energetic conversation with histories of scientific expeditions, which are rarely (if ever) approached comparatively. In the process, she expands our understanding of how—and why—scientific observation worked in the way that it did in the context of the (then) new genre of the scientific research trip. Yet her study also raises pressing questions about for whom or in whose interest these trips were realized, and the forms of labor upon which they relied.

Böttcher's study, which originated as a dissertation at the University of Regensburg, turns on comparative analysis of two types of primary source material: normative texts that put forward theories or methods for traveling well to would-be travelers, and accounts of scientific research expeditions (some of which originated in letters or diaries) that were popular, detailed, and regarded as exemplary in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These included Joseph Pitton de Tournefort's travels in the Levant (1700–1702); the second Kamchatka Expedition (also known as the Great Northern Expedition) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1733–1743) and a later expedition to the eastern portions of the Tsarist empire (1768–1774) the Academy also sponsored; the travels of Carsten Niebuhr in East Asia (1761–1767); James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific (1772–1775) involving Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg; the journey of Antoine Raymond Joseph Bruni D'Entrecasteaux to the Australian coast (1791–1793); and accounts of Alexander von Humboldt's travels in the Americas (1799–1804).

In all of these texts, the author discerns a recognizable “pattern of action” (Handlungsmuster). This pattern always involved the articulation of idealized standards, descriptions of the traveler's “observational praxis” (Beobachtungspraxis), and a thorough accounting of the scientific journey's specific results, findings, and significance (32–33). By observational praxis, Böttcher means “all activities and factors focused on using observation to obtain information that can then be deployed for scientific purposes,” including many of those found in forms of natural-historical inquiry (Naturkunde), descriptions of weather patterns and interactions with local inhabitants, specific sensory-based experiences and encounters (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.), developing preparations, and endeavoring to communicate specific observations to colleagues (34). What emerges when these accounts of scientific journeys are approached from the perspective of observation as epistemic concept and praxis, Böttcher argues, is a recognizable and idealized social type (Typus) with a desirable status and position: a “traveling researcher of nature” (Naturforscher auf Reisen or Forschungsreisende, 36–37), referred to throughout the study as a Wissenschaftler. These traveling researchers deployed common methods of gathering, processing, and communicating information and, in the process, they turned their observational practices into a way of life.

Using the scientific travel reports she has chosen as her sample, Böttcher offers a highly nuanced account of efforts to help observers-in-training learn how to become attentive or to manage an embodied attentiveness (Aufmerksamkeit). This involved acquiring, over time, the ability (Fähigkeit) to intuitively combine the right amount of passion, enthusiasm, and curiosity (115–116) with an eye for the best possible use or application of systematically acquired observations. Böttcher considers efforts to make, find, transport, and maintain instruments during scientific journeys, noting that in many cases mechanics and instrument-maker apprentices came along and were expected to make impromptu repairs requiring wide-ranging forms of technical expertise. In the case of the second Kamchatka Expedition, Böttcher notes that a group of university students interested in natural history were brought to St. Petersburg to compete for an opportunity to go along, with those who were chosen serving as the traveling scientists’ personal assistants. She later explains that this particular expedition made the teaching and training of “fellow travelers” (Mitreisende) a high priority, with the promise of professorships for the young students who traveled along as assistants upon their return (363).

To be sure, these journeys offered opportunities for highly desirable forms of scientific training to select cadres of young men that could not be acquired back home, even in university settings. What is less emphasized by Böttcher, though, is the extent to which the labor of these students, along with the scores of the frequently young men who accompanied the Forschungsreisende on their journeys, was probably valued much more highly than the pedagogical opportunities these journeys afforded—or that these two “benefits” were inextricably linked to each other. In reality, the scientific observer's “way of life,” including their ability to realize the goals of the expeditions they oversaw, hinged on assimilating the expertise and hard work (carrying, polishing, repairing, etc.) of hundreds if not thousands of Mitreisende. Most of these people would never acquire the social or professional position of the Naturforscher—and were not extensively discussed in formal accounts of the journeys—but arguably it was upon their labor and material expertise that the success of this scientific Typus, and Lebensart, depended.