Abstract
New research technologies can create gaps between old and new practices that need to be integrated if historically significant, continuous research programs are to be sustained. In our study of biodiversity survey work spanning a century, we track consequences of a series of seemingly “trivial” and “technical” decisions on how to represent a species locality in a biodiversity database, and show how these contingencies entrenched an unavoidable gap between two concepts of ecological space. We ask why locality data produced by a new technology – Global Positioning Systems (GPS) – is not interoperable with data produced by a long-standing technology of descriptive field-notes. We argue that interoperability is not practically feasible in this case – and we suspect in other cases as well – because more than one concept of space shapes the working practices of scientists. “Space,” as something “out there,” unaffected by the organisms inhabiting it, is embedded in representations of “locality” via the use of an exogenous regular grid of, for example, latitude and longitude coordinates. This concept is inevitably in tension with a view of space as a dynamic organism-environment relation represented in narrative, context-sensitive field-notes. In our case study, the technologies sustaining an exogenous concept of space did not successfully “incorporate” technologies sustaining an interactionist concept of space, yet both kinds of technology were required for a usable database of species distributions. Reflection by scientists on their historical practices explicated these theoretical tensions and brought about a resolution: workable alternation rather than universal interoperability between two concepts of space and kinds of locality descriptions. We therefore suggest that historical analysis may function as a practical tool for those who tackle theoretical challenges in research fields driven by technological change.
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Notes
- 1.
On the history of intensive and extensive biodiversity surveys see Kohler (2006).
- 2.
Accessed June 21, 2008. Field notes document that Grinnell and his colleagues were trapping in Yosemite in 1911. His book on Yosemite (see below), describing the transect discussed here, covers work beginning in 1914. The 2003 Yosemite Report describes the original survey as taking place from 1911 to 1919. The index page at the resurvey website describes it as 1914 to 1920. The 2007 Inventory and Monitoring report describes it as 1911–1920. These date discrepancies are typical of complex, multi-investigator projects and are often due to differences in whether the description concerns field seasons, project authorization or funding cycles, or report due dates.
- 3.
The resurvey project was funded by the NPS (Inventory and Monitoring Program), Yosemite National Park and Patton’s private resources.
- 4.
“Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.” IEEE (1990, 42).
- 5.
Funding outside Yosemite was provided by NSF, and within Yosemite by the National Geographic Society and the former director’s private resources.
- 6.
Accessed July 18, 2008.
- 7.
Accessed July 18, 2008. This was one of Grinnell’s original theoretical goals (see Griesemer, 1990). Policy options for intervention due to climate change were not an integral part of either of these studies per se, but the policy implications were clear: see, e.g. Nijhuis (2005, accessed 24 June 2008).
- 8.
As developmental systems theorists and niche constructionists note, these “environments” include other organisms, so ecological and evolutionary theories involving this sort of concept of environment will be more complicated than traditional theories assuming that environments are specified entirely “exogenously” to the organisms living in them.
- 9.
- 10.
Grinnell, J., “Analysis of Functions,” 2, November 22, 1935, an official document signed by Grinnell, Alexander and Sproul (the University President). MVZ Archive, located at the MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 11.
Ibid., 1.
- 12.
Grinnell, J., Schedule of Curatorial Duties for Staff Members, 5, August 15, 1929, MVZ Archive, MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 13.
April 20, 1938. MVZ archive, MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 14.
November 13, 1925. MVZ archive, MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 15.
Interviews with senior staff, April 18, 2006 and May 1, 2006.
- 16.
Grinnell, J., April 20, 1938, 2, MVZ archive, MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 17.
Grinnell J. letter to Alexander A., 1907, cited in Griesemer and Gerson (1993, 198).
- 18.
Interviews with senior staff, March 28, 2006 and May 1, 2006.
- 19.
Wythe, M., “Suggestion for handling specimens brought fresh into museum and intended for collections of the museum of vertebrate zoology,” November 13, 1925. MVZ archive, the MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical.
- 20.
Storer T. to Grinnell J., November 24, 1914; Grinnell J. to Storer, T., December 4, 1914, MVZ Letter Correspondence Archive, MVZ main Gallery. We thank Elihu Gerson for first mentioning this correspondence to us.
- 21.
We thank John Wieczorek for this comment.
- 22.
Grinnell resurvey meeting, January 23, 2007. For more on the biological rationale for this view see Shavit and Griesemer (2009).
- 23.
In that sense this “verbatim locality” differs from the “specific locality” which is only written in the museum and entered later into the MVZ database under the category of “locality.”
- 24.
It is much quicker and easier to find the information one needs to copy from the specimen tag/field catalog (the tags and the field catalog hold identical information) to the collection catalog (the index cards at the museum) if there is clear physical separation between “catalog” and “journal” in the field notebooks. For a clear analysis of rationalized coordination see Gerson (2007a).
- 25.
This commitment need not have been explicit. An exogenous or endogenous concept of space could be “chosen” indirectly by favoring certain properties used in descriptions of locality over others, e.g. lat/long over plant cover.
- 26.
Correspondence, September 3, 2008.
- 27.
That same request from Yosemite National Park was repeated in 2001, yet this time it marked the beginning of the MVZ’s ambitious “Grinnell Resurvey Project.”
- 28.
As mentioned, identical locality information appeared on the specimen tag, field catalog, and museum catalog cards, hence coding was done from either format. The original tag was used for entering bird taxa while catalog cards were used for mammal and reptile taxa. We thank James Patton for this comment.
- 29.
I.e. viewed as necessary for producing valid data because so many kinds of analysis came to assume it. See Wimsatt (2007) on the concept of entrenchment.
- 30.
Accessed July 18, 2008.
- 31.
Shavit, A., observation during weekly Grinnell Resurvey meetings between 2006 and 2008.
- 32.
Accessed 7 July 2008. “Datum” is a technical term referring to the mathematical basis for delimiting latitude, longitude and elevation relative to a mathematical model of the Earth as an ellipsoid, rather than based on local, ground-based measurements that are affected by local gravity. The shift from a geoid to an ellipsoid model was required when geodesy became based on satellite rather than ground-based measurements and to provide a world standard. “The WGS 84 continues to provide a single, common, accessible 3-dimensional coordinate system for geospatial data collected from a broad spectrum of sources.” (Department of Defense 2004, accessed 7 July 2008).
- 33.
Senior staff, September 3, 2008.
- 34.
Senior staff, September 3, 2008.
- 35.
Perrine, John (manuscript). “Data Fields to Capture for Grinnell Resurvey Project.” A protocol draft discussed by all senior MVZ researchers and completed on May 5, 2007.
- 36.
Shavit, A., observation during weekly Grinnell Resurvey meeting, March 17, 2008.
- 37.
Shavit, A., observation during Grinnell resurvey meeting with programmers from Alaska and MVZ, April 23, 2008.
- 38.
The primacy of the electronic spreadsheet over the handwritten notebook is one of the reasons why the Grinnell Resurvey project maintained three separate local databases during 2004–2007, none of them interoperable with the main MVZ database.
- 39.
“Metadata” is information about information. That is, information about the nature and structure of the data, for example “author,” “title” and “date” for finding a particular book in the library database. “Metadata” is familiar to the average reader from the information in the head section of an html-based web page, preceding the body of the page, between the tags <meta> and </meta>, which is used by search engines to catalog web pages.
- 40.
Grinnell, Joseph, “Suggestions as to Collecting and Field note Taking,” 6, April 20, 1938. MVZ archive, MVZ main gallery, top left cabinet, file name: Museum Methods – Historical (underscore in original).
- 41.
Perrine, J, “Data Fields to Capture for Grinnell Resurvey Project”. A protocol draft commented by senior MVZ researchers and completed on May 5, 2007, 4.
- 42.
Shavit, A., observation during weekly Grinnell Resurvey meeting, April 24, 2007.
- 43.
Interviews or comments made by various MVZ personnel, March 24, 2007; March 8, 2008; May 15, 2008; April 10, 2009.
- 44.
April 10, 2009, written comment on the manuscript.
- 45.
Personal observation in MVZ field trips, during August and September 2007 and May 2008.
- 46.
It is important to mention that not all MVZ personnel agree with our interpretation. A leading programmer analyst: “I definitely disagree with this statement. I’d like to think I have maintained Grinnell’s vision in all that I’ve done, even if I might record data in ways different from what he did”. April 10, 2009. What precisely it means to maintain Grinnell’s vision is, of course, one important aspect of what our work aims to understand. To some extent, disagreements within the MVZ about what it means to maintain Grinnell’s vision probably reflect generational differences among museum staff; changing disciplinary, institutional, and organizational structures and pressures; and differing exposure to technology and technology-induced conceptual change.
- 47.
Moritz, C. et al., “The Grinnell Project: Using a Unique Historical Record to Document Responses of Mammals and Birds to 100 years of Climate Change.,” Grant number 0640859, submitted to NSF program PD-041128, on July 9, 2006.
- 48.
Accessed 7 July 7, 2008. “Higher geography” refers to features such as: “continent, ocean, country, state, province, county …”
- 49.
Accessed July 7, 2008.
- 50.
Interview with MVZ curator, March 23, 2006. It is not the process of curating that is expected to be instantaneous but the upload of corrected data into the database, after a long process of correcting the georeferenced records has been completed.
- 51.
Interview with senior staff, June 9, 2008.
- 52.
Shavit, A., observation during weekly Grinnell Resurvey meeting, March 6, 2007.
- 53.
We use the metaphor of “bridging” to indicate the gap is not closed, but these may be fragile bridges. We base our notion of workable alternation on the important thesis of Kiester and White (in preparation) that “… a structured relationship between two alternative concepts of space provides the most comprehensive and accurate assessment of the distribution of biodiversity and its geographical patterns of policy requirements.” Kiester and White invoke Wilhelm Windelband’s nineteenth century distinction of “nomothetic” and “idiographic” purposes of scientific investigation in order to contrast different concepts and modes of representation of space that must alternate at different spatial scales in empirically sufficient ecological and geographic studies of biodiversity.
- 54.
In this sense, we agree with the programmer analyst (see footnote 46), that the technical database work of the resurvey has been conducted in keeping with Grinnell’s vision.
- 55.
For a description of the Digital MVZ projects, see: http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Digital_MVZ_Project.html (accessed 7 July 2008). On GReF, see http://code.google.com/p/gref-mvz/wiki/UserGuide (accessed 7 July 2008).
- 56.
We have greatly benefited from a clear discussion on this remark by Wittgenstein in Ben Menahem (2006).
- 57.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Elihu Gerson, James Patton, and John Wieckzorek for their detailed comments on the manuscript, Martin Carrier and Alfred Nordmann for their comments and encouragement, and audiences at the Center for Population Biology (UC Davis), Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (UC Berkeley), and at a workshop of the ZiF project on Science in the Context of Application. We especially thank the staff of the MVZ, for their hospitality, integrity, ability, and critical insights.
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Shavit, A., Griesemer, J. (2011). Transforming Objects into Data: How Minute Technicalities of Recording “Species Location” Entrench a Basic Challenge for Biodiversity. In: Carrier, M., Nordmann, A. (eds) Science in the Context of Application. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 274. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_12
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