IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB999265001

Making a Stable Sea: The Littorals of Eighteenth-Century Europe and the Origins of a Spatial Concept (2021)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 112
Issue: 1
Pages: 130-140
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

URI: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/713563

DOI: 10.1086/713563

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Hydrography Littoral zone, nearshore Oceanography Sea level Measurement Controversies and disputes Coastal zone and estuarine studies Oceans and seas 19th century 18th century Europe

Sea level has become the almost unavoidable reference point of the impending environmental cataclysm. While inherently variable, sea level has been naturalized, in the form of mean sea level, as the most reliable vertical datum. But for all its allure as a global baseline, mean sea level is the rather recent product of very specific local environmental and cultural conditions. Its exact definition in the early nineteenth century, built on the assumption of the reliability of littorals as reference points for heights, was preceded in the eighteenth century by lengthy and lively debates about perceived long-term variations of sea level, in which those who insisted on its rise or decline used local examples to bolster their generalizations. This essay explores these debates and lays out how they paved the way for the development of the ideas of a stable sea and of a measured mean sea level.

...More

Included in

Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (2021) Knowing the Littoral: Perception and Representation of Terraqueous Spaces in a Global Perspective. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 108-110). unapi

Citation URI

stagingisis.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB999265001

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg; (2021)
Knowing the Littoral: Perception and Representation of Terraqueous Spaces in a Global Perspective

Article Marina Tolmacheva; (2021)
Reflections on the Knowledge of Shallow Waters

Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg; (2020)
Measuring zero at sea: On the delocalization and abstraction of the geodetic framework

Article Christopher L. Pastore; (2021)
The Science of Shallow Waters: Connecting and Classifying the Early Modern Atlantic

Article Debjani Bhattacharyya; (2021)
A River Is Not a Pendulum: Sediments of Science in the World of Tides

Article Elke Papelitzky; (2021)
Shallow Water at China’s Coast: Depicting Dangers on Early Modern Chinese Maps

Article Davey, J.; (2011)
The Advancement of Nautical Knowledge: The Hydrographical Office, the Royal Navy and the Charting of the Baltic Sea, 1795--1815

Article Lee-Lung Fu; Dean H. Roemmich; (Fall 2018)
Monitoring Global Sea Level Change from Spaceborne and In Situ Observing Systems

Book Stefan Helmreich; (2023)
A Book of Waves

Review Lino Camprubí; (2021)
Review of "Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole"

Chapter Rodolfo John Alaniz; (2016)
A Conflict of Interests: How International Marine Science Practices Shaped the Nineteenth-century Biotic Debate

Book Adamowsky, Natascha; (2015)
The Mysterious Science of the Sea, 1775--1943

Thesis Han, Ki Won; (2010)
The Rise of Oceanography in the United States, 1900--1940

Book Sandra Primon; Paolo Mozzi; (2023)
Antichi paesaggi a Jesolo. Trasformazioni ambientali alle foci del Piave dall’età romana al Medioevo

Book Jason W. Smith; (2018)
To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire

Article Lamy, Jérôme; (2006)
Le problème des longitudes en mer dans les traités d'hydrographie des Jésuites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Choix méthodologiques et pratiques instrumentales

Article Galloway, James A.; (2013)
Coastal Flooding and Socioeconomic Change in Eastern England in the Later Middle Ages

Article Wolff, Torben; (2008)
The First Danish Deep-Sea Expedition on the Ingolf: 1895 and 1896

Article Smed, Jens; (2008)
Hydrographic Work of the Ingolf Expedition (1895 and 1896) to Icelandic and West Greenland Waters

Book Bates, Charles C.; Hanssen, G. L.; (2005)
Hydro to Navoceano: 175 Years of Ocean Survey and Prediction by the U.S. Navy, 1830--2005