Disciplines early on central to the Antarctic endeavor were astronomy, meteo-rology and oceanography. Of these, astronomy had an intellectual cross-over function, while the impact of the other two to a greater extent hinged on the personal initiative and networks of enterprising individuals. Let us consider the disciplines in the reverse order, beginning with the influence of John Murray and Mathew Maury respectively. In all three cases we shall be concerned with the emergence of a notion of parallel comparative observations across large por-tions of the globe guided by agreed-upon standards of measurement. Our claim
10 Goethe, Faust, Part I, “Night”.
11 Baumer 1949: 193-194.
12 Ortega 2001: 23-34.
is that such principles of standardization had a bearing on the development of an “Antarctic consciousness” in the sense referred to in the previous section.
The Voyage of the Challenger has been highlighted as a turning point both in the field of oceanography and in the initial steps of Antarctic exploration. We can probably discard now the generally accepted view that the ship in question was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. But it did carry on research at sub-Antarctic islands and the wealth of samples, experiments, observations and knowledge about the data gathered by this scientific expedition was indeed remarkable. Nevertheless, the concern for marine research in the Antarctic seas was not immediately heightened by this expedition and other naval expeditions which followed its path. A quite different picture arises from John Murray´s campaign for exploration of the Antarctic Continent. Sir Clements Markham called him “outspoken”13. Murray happened to be on board of the Challenger, and the circumstances and achievements of the voyage had some effect on his own intellectual development, but his individual capacity to influence people and institutions, rather than any particular contribution from the marine sciences, is at the root of the new Antarctic consciousness. The role played by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Antarctic affairs and William Speirs Bruce´s Scottish National Antarctic Expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula (1902-04) are a significant reference point in this respect.
Quite a different question is the importance of weather phenomena and the need for sailing ships and other vessels to know as much as feasible about the ways to prevent or anticipate the adverse effects of severe weather. Mathew Fontaine Maury, Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, made a proposal “On the establishment of a Universal System of Meteorological Observations by Sea and Land” in 1851. His impetus provided the favourable climate for the adoption by the First International Maritime Meteorological Congress held at Brussels in 1853 of a standardized regime of nautical meteorological observations. All the representatives to that Conference were naval officers with only two exceptions, a British military engineer and a Belgian statistician14. In 1860 he lectured at the Royal Geographical Society on the geographic nature of the seas surrounding Antarctica. In April 1861 he delivered in Washington a proposal to the diplomat-ic representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and Spain on the scientific objectives which could best be served by Antarctic exploration. No reply was received from any of the maritime powers concerned by the proposal15.
Let us now move to a very different field, requiring a more comprehensive re-view: the overlapping of astronomic research and the start of international polar cooperation. Edmond Halley (1656-1742) had observed the transit of Mercury from the island of St Helena in 1677. He had been the Secretary of the Royal Society and then turned to calculating comet orbits and designing the “Halley-an” method for the observation of the Venus Transit. It may be useful to recall that his main contender in this field, Joseph-Nicholas Delisle (1688-1768) came from a family of geographers and cartographers intensely associated with the
13 Markham 1986: 7.
14 Speeckaert 1980: 141.
15 Bertrand 1972: 204-205.
question of a Southern Continent. Halley´s broad interests impressed the British Admiralty that took the decision to place the sloop Paramour at his disposal for the first sea voyage ever undertaken by a naval vessel for strictly scientific rea-sons. The scientific work included navigation, atmospheric circulation, and the Earth´s magnetic field. In that domain, Halley can be considered as the founder of geophysics and his chart of magnetic variations in the Atlantic represented a major contribution to future research in the Southern Ocean16.
Halley had come close to facing a mutiny in Barbados and when a new Transit was envisaged in 1769, the Admiralty again agreed to furnish a ship to the Royal Society but refused to entrust the command of such expedition to the hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple, even though he was the recognized grand scholar on issues concerning the Terra Australis, which was the complementary objective of the naval expedition being planned. The outcome was the designa-tion of Captain James Cook by both the Navy and the Transit Committee. He was accompanied by the astronomer Charles Green, the naturalist Joseph Banks and the Swedish botanist Solander. After observations in Tierra del Fue-go, Cook crossed the Pacific to Tahiti where Green carried on his observations at Pointe Venus, and the exploration of the Southern Ocean initiated a cycle which included the circumnavigation of New Zealand, landing on Botany Bay and the observation of the transit of Mercury. As is well known, the next expe-dition was the great Antarctic voyage, promoted by the Board of Longitude, the Royal Society and the British Admiralty, where a complete scientific programme was implemented17.
When we reflect on these maritime voyages (Halley´s and Cooks’s) and their place in Antarctic exploration, the relevance of astronomic observations carried on a routine basis by naval officers and civilians on board of vessels to Antarctic research is provided only by their geographic location providing a casual bridge which sometimes may be crossed over. The issue of place and time is never-theless not superfluous. Neumayer´s proposal for a polar expedition put to the First International Geographic Congress (Antwerp 1871)18 is connected with a survey for finding a good site for the observations of the Transits of Venus in 1874 and 188219. In his Antwerp paper and a subsequent essay he refers to the well known British Astronomer Royal Sir George Bidell Airy (1801-92). How-ever, the first proposal for a web of Antarctic or sub-Antarctic stations was made in connection with the forthcoming 1874 Transit by a Fellow of the Royal Astro-nomical Society, who was also an influential scientific journalist, Richard Antony Proctor (1837-1888). Unfortunately, his proposals were rejected precisely by Airy and by the British Admiralty, among other reasons because some of the locations included non-existent sub-Antarctic islands20. Although none of them could anticipate how these ideas would coalesce, and irrespective of their very different roles and backgrounds, both Neumayer and Proctor could be consid-ered as pioneers in a process which leads, through the overlapping of the 1882
16 Fogg 1992: 8-17.
17 Rubin 1982: 33-47.
18 Dautert 1957: 43-44.
19 Krause 1998: 58-59.
20 Sheehan and Westfall 2004: 232-234.
Transit with the 1882-83 Polar Year, to consider the establishment of stations and observation posts close to Antarctica.
A pattern develops (Halley, Cook, Maury, Murray, Neumayer, Proctor), under-lining the importance of physical connections across the Southern Ocean; but do ideas readily cross over from one intellectual cluster to another? In fact, parallel observations on various scientific fields are being performed but the unifying factor of location lacks a defined conceptual expression unless these observations develop into comparative measurements which gradually integrate into the framework which seeks comparisons between physical phenomena in the sub-Polar and Polar Regions21. There is one outstanding example of cross-fertilization: the elaboration made by Karl Weyprecht of Maury´s ideas of syn-chronous meteorological and magnetic observations by submitting the idea of a network of stations for synoptic observations in the north polar areas to various scientific societies. However, before its formal adoption by the International Meteorogical Congress (Rome, 1879) the influence of Dr. Heinrich Dove, Direc-tor of the Prussian Meteorological Service had to be exerted at various instan-ces. Baker has traced the idea from Halley and Maury to Weyprecht, recalling that K.F. Gauss and W. Weber through the auspices of the Göttingen Magnetic Union had united 44 stations in observations of the Earth´s magnetism22. We would like to present three other cases where the concept of comparative observations had an indirect or direct effect on the course of scientific research related to Antarctica and the rise of an Antarctic consciousness in Chile.