Mario Biagioli, a historian of science at Harvard, wrote a book a dozen or so years ago called Galileo, Courtier. It's a study of the context of patronage, courtly virtue, and shifting credibility between philosophers and mathematicians in and around the time of Galileo's trial. Great book, fascinating to read, lots to say about it. But my point of interest right now is in the idea and practice of scientific patronage. Biagioli says in his epilogue that his story of Galileo helps highlight the shift in scientific patronage from earlier princely forms to later institutional ones, and that this was one quite significant dimension of what we call the scientific revolution.
I thought of this last weekend when reading Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, which had an article, "Jurassic Park," about "The richest undisturbed cache of dinosaur fossils in North America" (to quote their on-line header).
An apatosaurus, pretty much
It's an easy and quick read, and great story telling. About a guy, Allen Cook, whose land in southwest Wyoming turns out to have, as someone once said, "the richest undisturbed cache of dinosaur fossils in North America." He ended up donating the land to the University of Pittsburgh, and how that happened, and what it means for paleontology, are the themes of the article.
The Phases of the Moon, by Galileo, which doesn't fit this part of the post, should have gone above, but what are you gonna do?
So here we have a guy whose patronage allows for the furthering of paleontological research, in ways much different of course than how Galileo had been supported by the Medici's in his earlier work (1612--when he named the moons of Jupiter after them in - big points to score there) and later, in 1632 (when Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) was none too happy with the whole Dialogues thing about heliocentrism, and, we find, when Galileo was not in as strong a position as a court favorite)...but in ways similar too, that I thought were sharp. You know, that patronage is a constant, that scientists always still have some sponsor, just that who that sponsor is (wealthy dowager, landowner in Wyoming, Queen of England, the state [like the NSF, or the DOD, or the legislature], private trust) changes.
All of this leads to: when did the Brontosaurus become the Apatosaurus? Is that like the Pluto demotion thing/no longer a planet/yes it's a planet/what do you mean, planet?/etc.? Nobody ever told me, and now my kid's growing up in a world full of Apatosaurs. All of my old Brontosaurus material falls flat.
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Dude, welcome to my world!
The Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus switch makes me doubt the argument that kids around the world will be disappointed if Pluto loses its status as a planet. Other than those who study dinosaurs for a living, the only significant group of humans who know that Apatosaurus is now what we're supposed to call Brontosaurus is kids. They don't mind things changing, and in fact love to be ones to remind adults of the way things are supposed to be:
"Come on, Dad, no one's called them Brontosauruses for 20 years now."
For the same reason, kids will be among the first to embrace the new number of planets, should the IAU decide we have 12 or 8 or 53. All this talk of kids writing hate mail to astronomers demanding Pluto stay a full-fledged planet is nonsense.
I'm one of those kids who grew up adoring the Natural History museum in England, with its big Diplodocus skeleton, and Brontosaurus will always be Brontosaurus to me. But there, you have it, my kids now will probably feel that way about Apatosaurus.